Shelby County Commissioner Henri Brooks is optimistic she’ll be able to secure local dollars for lead remediation. City Councilman Philip Spinosa is hopeful he’ll be able to protect more kids in his district. And state Sen. London Lamar thinks she’s making progress in Nashville.
After our recent investigation into the city’s lead crisis and the lack of local investment in addressing it, MLK50: Justice Through Journalism reached out to 20 local elected officials who represent either the entire city or neighborhoods particularly harmed by lead. While most — including Memphis Mayor Paul Young — did not reply to our interview requests, a handful agreed to speak with MLK50 and discuss what could be done to address lead’s effects.
Currently, the city and county programs in charge of protecting kids from lead hazards receive $0 from the local government and run instead on federal grants.
With this funding, the programs are able to employ fewer than 10 people combined and haven’t been able to remove lead hazards from nearly as many homes as they were pre-pandemic. Meanwhile, about 390 kids under 6 in Shelby County tested positive for lead poisoning last year, according to state data, which is likely a significant undercount since only 17% of young children were tested.
Compared to their peers, these kids will likely go on to perform worse in school and face more health issues, such as developmental disabilities, mental illnesses and cardiovascular disease, according to a large body of research.
And because the toxin also weakens the brain’s ability to control impulses, these kids end up more at risk of engaging in impulsive behavior, including criminal activity as teens and adults, experts say.
As the toxin continues to exacerbate the public safety, health and education challenges facing the county, none of the elected officials who spoke with MLK50 made it clear how they’ll be able to make a big difference on the issue in the near future. However, each was optimistic change is possible if they can get their fellow legislators on board.
City and county support
Brooks said lead poisoning has been on her radar for decades as an issue that disproportionately harms the city’s Black children. Kids most frequently ingest the toxin through deteriorating paint in homes built before 1978, and Black residents primarily occupy older homes, thanks to white flight and segregation.
Brooks, whose district has some of the oldest homes in the city, said two pieces of MLK50’s investigation particularly caught her attention — the lack of testing and the connection to crime.
The fact that the county is allowing kids’ lead poisoning to go undetected, she said, “underscores (that) the lives of Black children really don’t matter.”
The crime link, she said, made clearer to her how much of the mass incarceration of Black people is being driven by a failure to protect children.
Given lead’s effects on crime, education and health, Brooks said she doesn’t think it will necessarily be a tough sell to get the county to invest its own dollars into lead testing and remediation. The trick, she said, will be to find a way to get the attention of her fellow commissioners.
Similarly, Spinosa told MLK50 that it’s plausible that the city would invest in the issue. However, he didn’t want to discuss specifics until he saw Young’s budget proposal.
He did say, though, that he reached out to Tavita Conway, who runs the City of Memphis Lead-Safe Program, after reading MLK50’s reporting. He said her program will continue to have his attention since ZIP 38122 in his district has one of the city’s highest percentages of old homes, meaning its children face a higher risk of being lead poisoned.
“It’s a focus item for me to get resources to people in 38122,” he said.
Conway and Sharon Hyde, manager of the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative’s anti-lead efforts in Shelby County, told MLK50 they’re hopeful Young will be able to make progress on lead past mayors haven’t been able to, given his background in housing.
Young’s communications team did not make him available for an interview for this story or respond to questions sent to them.
Other than from the new mayor, City Council and County Commission, local lead experts said they’d love to get more support from Memphis-Shelby County Schools.
School board member Frank Johnson told MLK50 he’s also been frustrated by how little the school district seems to care about the issue. As a longtime environmental justice activist, Johnson said he’s been aware of lead’s effects on behavior and education for about a decade.
To him, it’s obvious that lead is making local kids more impulsive, which causes major disruptions to learning.
“(Teachers have to) devote so much time to those (disruptive) couple of students,” he said.
Because of the nature of disruptive behavior, Johnson wasn’t surprised by recent research that found the number of lead-poisoned kids in a given school significantly impacted whether their classmates would be suspended, graduate from high school and attend college.
Johnson said he has tried to spread this message to school leaders in his district — including a Zoom call in 2022 with three principals — and to other school board members. He’s struggled to convince the school board members, he said, that students’ behavioral issues are tied to lead.
To make a difference, Johnson said he will try to sit down with more school board members individually, but he’s not sure how his colleagues will respond.
Preparing for statewide change
Two months ago, Lamar tried to address the lead crisis by introducing a bill to the Tennessee General Assembly that she knew wouldn’t pass.
The bill would have mandated lead testing for kids before they entered a public kindergarten and for pregnant women receiving vouchers for the special supplemental food program for women, infants, and children.
The Senate Health and Welfare Committee voted it down 6-3 on Feb. 21. But Lamar said her goal was simply to draw attention to the issue and lay the groundwork for future legislation.
“I wanted to use my influence to bring light and support to this (work),” she said.
Lamar said she got the idea for the legislation from LaTricea Adams, the Memphis-based founder and CEO of Young, Gifted & Green (formerly Black Millennials for Flint).
On the whole, Adams was happy with how the bill performed. She said it received more votes in committee than she expected — including support from two Republicans — and drew verbal support from the Tennessee Department of Health.
She thinks she’ll have a real shot at getting something passed in the General Assembly next year with a couple of changes.
First, she plans to trim it down to only include testing of children, making it more similar to legislation that’s been passed in other states.
Second, she plans to find white legislators and advocates able to lobby well for the bill. She thinks part of the reason the bill didn’t gain traction with the committee was because it was presented by two Black women from Memphis — her and Lamar.
Adams said the bill also could have performed better with the committee if not for the fiscal memo attached to it. The Tennessee General Assembly has a Fiscal Review Committee that analyzes the amount of money bills will cost taxpayers. With Lamar’s bill, the committee estimated a price tag of $38 million per year, which Adams and Lamar disagreed with.
The Fiscal Review Committee staff members interpreted Lamar’s bill as requiring the testing of every public school student every year — not just those entering public school for the first time — hence the large price tag.
The bill itself says it “requires every child, prior to attendance at a public school, to be tested for blood lead levels.” Krista Lee Carsner, executive director of the Fiscal Review Committee, told MLK50 that she stands by her interpretation that such language implies every child would be tested every year. If Lamar intended otherwise, Carsner said she should have used the word “enrollment” instead of “attendance.”
Adams said she hopes to clear up any misunderstandings with next year’s bill.
Jacob Steimer is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Email him at Jacob.Steimer@mlk50.com
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