Biddeford landlord Chuck Pothier suspected there was lead dust in his 1950s-era apartment building and worried about the harm it could cause to the young children living there. But getting rid of it was an expensive undertaking.

Pothier turned to the city’s Lead Hazard Reduction and Healthy Home Program for forgivable loans and grants to remove the lead contamination. Without that assistance, his buildings could have remained among the thousands across the state built before 1978 that may contain lead paint that causes irreversible harm to children.

“I wanted to provide safe, affordable, clean housing and I needed some help,” he said in a recent interview. “The program was a lifeline for me.”

Maine has some of the oldest housing stock in the country, putting children at increased risk of exposure to lead dust. Lead paint was banned by the federal government in 1978, but it can still be found in older homes and apartment buildings, especially ones that have not been updated or well-maintained.

The Environmental Protection Agency last month finalized stronger requirements for identifying and cleaning up lead paint dust in homes and child care facilities. The EPA estimates that 31 million dwellings built before 1978 still contain lead-based paint, including 3.8 million that are home to children younger than 6.

Under the new rules, any detectable level of lead dust is considered a lead hazard and property owners are required to have it cleaned up.

Programs like the one Pothier used in Biddeford to abate lead hazards and increase testing have cut childhood lead poisoning in Maine roughly in half over the past decade, according to state data. But officials say there is still a lot of work to be done to abate lead contamination – particularly in older apartments where low-income families live – and eradicate childhood lead poisoning.

The new federal rules could strengthen Maine’s efforts to eliminate the hazard from homes.

The latest standards significantly lower the amount of lead that can remain in dust on floors, windowsills and window troughs after a lead paint abatement. This will reduce lead exposure each year for up to 1.2 million people – including up to 326,000 children under 6 years old, according to EPA estimates.

Children are especially vulnerable to the impacts of lead exposure, which can cause irreversible health effects including behavioral problems, lower IQ and slowed growth. Lead exposure in adults can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and may cause cancer, according to the EPA.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention welcomed the new rules in a statement last week and is starting to review how they will impact the state.

“In principle, these new rules from the U.S. EPA should have a positive impact on the number of children who are exposed to lead dust,” department spokesperson Lindsay Hammes said.

In Maine, 309 children under 3 years old had elevated levels of lead in their blood in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the CDC. The communities with the highest number of children with lead poisoning between 2018 and 2022 include Portland (118), Lewiston (110), Auburn (60) and Biddeford (55).

“Lead dust is in so many of our homes and unless we do something about it, it’s not going to change,” said Lindsay Gannon, who works on lead poisoning prevention in Androscoggin County, which includes Lewiston and Auburn.

EXPANDED TESTING

In 1991, Maine lawmakers set a goal to eradicate childhood lead poisoning by 2010. While that goal has not been met, the number of children with an elevated blood lead level has dropped by 54%, from 674 in 2007 to 309 in 2022.

A new state law expanded the testing requirements for lead exposure in 2019 to include all 1- and 2-year-olds instead of only children on MaineCare. Until that law went into effect, Maine was the only New England state that did not require universal lead testing.

Before the testing requirements were expanded, about 52% of 1-year-olds and 31% of 2-year-olds were tested in 2018. Four years later, those numbers increased to 69% of 1-year-olds and 46% of 2-year-olds, according to the Maine CDC.

“It’s a really nice success story we’re seeing here in Maine,” said Karyn Butts, the manager of the state’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.

She said there has also been success in programs that help property owners and tenants test for lead dust and pay to clean it up.

Funding for those programs largely comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which awards grants to communities to pay for lead abatement in low-income housing units. The property owners, who receive forgivable loans to pay for the abatement, must also commit to keeping those units affordable for a several years after the work is done.

Biddeford has twice received HUD grants, about $3.2 million each, allowing the city to rehab 88 units since 2019, including three apartments buildings where a child had been poisoned, said Mayor Marty Grohman. To qualify, tenants cannot make more than 50% of the area median income. Property owners can receive a $10,000 forgivable loan and a $5,000 grant per unit for life safety update.

Pothier, the Biddeford landlord, paid out of pocket to decontaminate the first of his three apartment buildings several years ago. When he heard about the lead abatement grants, he applied so he could have the same work done on his other two buildings.

He also used the grants to fix code issues with an old staircase and windows. If he had to pay for all of that work out of pocket, he would have had to raise rents, which he did not want to do, he said.

“The funding from the program made it possible to make those places safer,” he said.

Grohman said the program has been a critical part of the city’s plan to increase the amount of safe, affordable housing.

“I always say it’s our No. 1 affordable housing development program,” Grohman said. “It’s been remarkable. It quietly churns away in the background.”

MAKING HOMES SAFE

The EPA says communities of color and lower-income communities are often at greater risk of lead exposure because of historic racial segregation in housing and reduced access to environmentally safe and affordable housing.

In Portland, where there has been a lead abatement program in some form since 1995, the city has increasingly incorporated education and efforts to communicate with immigrant families who live in older housing.

“It’s frequent that people who relocate to the United States aren’t aware of lead at all,” said Michele Guyette, the city’s lead safe housing program manager.

Portland was awarded a $3.4 million grant last month from HUD that will allow the city to address lead hazards in 110 housing units in Cumberland County. Guyette said most of the work is typically done in Portland and Westbrook where there are more people with low incomes living in buildings that have not been well-maintained.

This grant will also allow the city to hire a coordinator to help with tasks like temporarily relocating families while their apartments are abated. Guyette said some of the money will also go toward training certified lead inspectors to expand the workforce within the communities served by the HUD grants.

Glen Holmes, Auburn’s director of business and community development, said the federal funding the city receives has been critical to removing lead dust. Since 2009, the city has used HUD grants to inspect 335 units and decontaminate 206, he said.

“Most of the older apartment buildings tend to be the ones that aren’t well kept up, so there’s more chipping and peeling paint,” he said. “We need to protect everyone, but youth in particular. Lead poisoning doesn’t go away.”

While Androscoggin County has seen success in removing lead dust from homes and reducing childhood lead poisoning, “we still have a long way to go,” said Lindsay Gannon, who works on childhood lead poisoning prevention with the nonprofit Healthy Androscoggin. She said a multipronged approach is important: building new housing, fixing older buildings, and educating people about risks and resources.

“Lead is a topic we’ve talked about for a long time in our area. Sometime we think people might get a little fatigued, but it’s important to remind people about the issue,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do. People deserve to be in a home that’s healthy. They shouldn’t be poisoned in their homes.”

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