¡Plo-NO! Santa Ana
Orange County Environmental Justice
We bring the fight for environmental justice to Orange County through advocacy, public accountability, healing, and systemic transformation
¡Plo-NO! Santa Ana (Lead-Free Santa Ana)
Currently we are collaborating with the School of Public Health at UC Irvine and Jovenes Cultivando Cambio to test for lead in soil across Santa Ana's census tracts. We will publish a report of the findings in early 2019.
Watch this video to learn more about the health hazards of lead (Pb):
"What Does Lead Poisoning
Do to Your Brain?"
Orange County is home to significant inequality, and this extends to the very environments where people live, work, and raise their families. Lead is an environmental contaminant that can threaten children's health and cognitive development. ¡Plo-NO! Santa Ana focuses on evidence of toxic levels of lead in the soil in many Santa Ana neighborhoods. OCEJ has partnered with Jovenes Cultivando Cambios, a Santa Ana based youth-led cooperative, along with the Program in Public Health at the University of California, Irvine. We are working together to understand the prevalence and sources of lead contamination across Santa Ana's soil. Findings will be shared in Spring of 2019. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and get updates and invitations to future events. Ora
BACKGROUND
ThinkProgress tested more than 1,000 soil samples in homes and public spaces throughout Santa Ana, Ca. Nearly a quarter of the samples surpassed the hazardous level of 80 ppm set by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
In 2012, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that no level of lead in children is safe. The number of Santa Ana children tested with dangerous levels of lead in their blood exceeds the state average by 64 percent. This number includes only those with levels higher than 4.5 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dL).
Childhood lead poisoning dramatically decreased across America as the federal government began phasing out leaded gasoline in the 1970s. But many children are still being exposed today because of lead’s legacy: polluted environments, particularly in urban areas.
Now we know that even low concentrations of lead in children are dangerous to their health and well-being. Yet federal, state and local policies have failed to keep up with scientific research and do not protect children from lead’s irreversible consequences.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of a lead soil hazard in areas where children play is 400 parts per million (ppm) of lead or greater. This is the same standard set by California regulations and adhered to by the state’s Department of Public Health when responding to childhood lead poisoning cases.
Experts say these standards aren’t stringent enough to protect children from being lead-burdened. The federal and California soil lead standard of 400 ppm has no margin of safety for children, say the leading experts on childhood lead poisoning. The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has deemed that level too dangerous for children and lowered its soil standard to 80 ppm in 2009, but this is not a state regulation.
Read the full article here: