Sen. Baldwin, Rep. Moore call firings of lead poisoning experts 'haphazard,' urge their return amid Milwaukee lead crisis

Sarah Volpenhein - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Gwen Moore called on the nation's top health official to reinstate fired lead poisoning experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who were helping with a lead contamination crisis in Milwaukee.

The two Congressional members, both Democrats, made the call in a letter this week to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose agency laid off thousands of health workers, including its lead poisoning prevention branch, early this month.

They also urged Kennedy to approve a formal request from city health officials for federal help, called Epi-Aid, with responding to widespread lead contamination at Milwaukee Public Schools, where district officials lost control of pervasive lead hazards in most of its school buildings.

On April 3, officials with the Milwaukee Health Department received an email from a CDC official saying the request was denied "due to the complete loss of our Lead Program."

The denial came two days after all of the CDC employees part of Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch were laid off, part of sweeping layoffs at the Health and Human Services department, or HHS, according to national news reports.

"This haphazard approach to gutting the federal workforce is misguided and has resulted in unacceptable mistakes at the agency charged with safeguarding the public’s health," the letter to Kennedy said. "You have the ability to immediately rectify this issue, and we urge you to do so."

The layoffs are part of an overhaul of HHS that Kennedy says will streamline operations, make them more efficient and eliminate redundancies. The overhaul includes closing some regional offices, consolidating divisions and creating a new Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA.

In statements, HHS has said the reorganization "is not affecting critical regional and national efforts."

"HHS is planning to continue the important work of the lead poisoning prevention and surveillance branch that works to eliminate lead poisoning under the Administration for a Healthy America," said Emily G. Hilliard, deputy press secretary at HHS, in a previous email.

In the letter, the two Congresswomen said the firings have affected key programs already and warned of "lasting consequences for young children in Milwaukee."

"This assistance is needed in Milwaukee now," they said.

Milwaukee Health officials sought CDC help on lead in March

In their request, made in late March, Milwaukee health officials had asked for a small team of CDC experts to come to Milwaukee to help at lead testing clinics and to lend their expertise in the lead response.

Until the request was denied, the plan was for a team of three or four people to come to Milwaukee for four to five weeks, with the option of extending the visit, Milwaukee Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis said in a press conference last week.

City health officials had been working closely with lead poisoning experts at the CDC since early February, the month after they discovered an MPS school with flaking paint was the source of lead poisoning in a Milwaukee child.

Health officials suspected that lead paint hazards, identified in seven schools by mid-March, were more widespread, and they were working with the CDC experts on a plan to ramp up testing of school children's blood lead levels.

Then, the layoffs came.

"We don't have any contacts at the CDC for childhood lead poisoning," Totoraitis said in the press conference April 14. "This is a pretty unprecedented scenario to not have someone to turn to at the CDC."

But he later walked back those comments, saying the programs had been consolidated, CBS News reported.

MPS has more than 100 schools built before lead paint was banned. The district assumes they all have lead-based paint. It’s considered safe as long as it’s contained. When it starts peeling, cracking or chalking, it can pose a hazard to children who might ingest or inhale it.

Over the last three decades, MPS cut most of its painting staff, stopped providing regular "painting days" and shifted painting costs onto individual schools.

City health officials said it appeared MPS had not kept up with annual inspections of its schools for lead.

MPS officials have pledged to improve internal systems amid demands from school board members and parents. The district will also stop requiring principals to cover painting costs with individual school budgets, Superintendent Brenda Cassellius has said.