‘This is a real poison’: How lead exposure is killing Memphis families
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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A silent killer is lurking in homes across Shelby County. Lead is poisoning children in the Mid-South and affecting their ability to learn and grow.
“And I realized it wasn’t as safe as I thought it was,” Brown explained.
From the bathroom to the kitchen to the siding in her home, the lead levels throughout her house were dangerously high.
The home was constructed in 1942.
“I’ve had little babies,” Brown explained. “I’ve had little kids, I’ve had my grandkids, my baby brother, you know, we were all in this.”
Pushing for awareness
For the past quarter century, Anita Tate has been working to raise awareness of the hazards of lead in Shelby County homes.
“This is a poison,” Tate explained. “It is destroying our children.”
Now the manager of the Shelby County Lead Hazard Reduction Program, Tate connects Memphis families with millions of dollars in grant funding to remove the hazard from homes.
As FOX13 has reported, half of the homes in Memphis were built before 1978, the year lead paint was banned.
“Our housing stock is very dangerous,” Tate said. “There is still a lot of lead-based paint out there.”
In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development granted Shelby County $4.1 million to rehabilitate 150 homes by July 2023.
“They have to do nothing but trust us to come into their home and know that our purpose there is to make this home safe for them and their children,” Tate said.
This program is also available for rental properties. If a landlord agrees to have the property renovated, they are not allowed to raise the rent for three years.
HUD also recently granted the Memphis $5.7 million to eradicate the poison from the city.
TO HAVE YOUR HOME OR RENTAL PROPERTY TESTED FOR LEAD, CALL (901) 222 – 7605.
‘This is a real poison’
“If they’re exposed at early ages, they’re affected for a lifetime,” Tate said. They go to school and they can’t learn at the pace of other children. They act out and they’re deemed to be bad kids.”
Last year, 389 children in Shelby County tested positive for lead poisoning, according to state data. However, only 17 percent of young students were tested.
That same year, only 15 percent of kids in Memphis-Shelby County schools met or exceeded math expectations, according to the state.
“Money spent on lead very quickly pays for itself in educational, health and public safety improvements,” Steimer said.
Children exposed to lead are at greater risk for medical challenges later in life like heart disease.
“It may not be that they are just bad,” Tate explained. “It could be that they got exposed to lead or some other environmental hazards as they were growing.”
‘A blessing’
After the Shelby County Lead Hazard Reduction Program discovered the high levels of lead in Charlotte Brown’s home, the team got to work.
“When they start taking the wood apart, it just disintegrated in their hands,” she recalled.
The program invested $21,000 of HUD’s lead removal funds to replace the chipped paint and the hazards around her home. Because of other hazards on the property, HUD authorized the county to spend another $23,000 in ‘Healthy Homes’ funds to make Brown’s home safer.
“All I could do was cry because it was happening,” Brown said. “My life was going to change.”
Once overwhelmed by all the repairs, Brown had considered selling the home that had been passed down in her family for generations. Now, the South Memphis grandmother is grateful her family home will stay her family home.
“It’s really a safe place now,” Brown smiled through her tears.
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