No parent should have to worry that they could be subjecting a child to lead poisoning. Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Biden's Lead Pipe & Paint Action Plan, we can spare families like Deana's from this fate and ensure their peace of mind.
Thanks to Biden, there's big progress on lead pipes
President Biden’s infrastructure investments will ensure that kids like my son don’t get lead poisoning
Two days after taking my son Aidan to get a blood test, I got a call from his pediatrician: “Your son needs to go to the hospital right now. We’ve already booked him a room.” The results of the test showed that Aidan, then just 2 years old, had lead poisoning.
I was shocked. Where had my son been exposed to lead? At that point, I knew nothing about lead exposure. I worried that Aidan's doctors were downplaying how dangerous lead poisoning can be, so I started to do more research. I learned that high lead levels are extremely harmful — especially to children. Lead exposure can cause seizures, weight loss, developmental delays, irritability and learning disorders.
When we returned home from the hospital after Aidan received treatment, an inspection revealed that lead paint covered all of the windows in the house we were renting. A contractor came to remove the lead paint and I prayed that would be the end of our troubles.
Yet just after Thanksgiving of 2018, Aidan was hospitalized for lead poisoning again — this time a two-week stay. At that point, Child Protective Services got involved and said, “We can’t discharge your son from the hospital until he has a safe living environment.”
Another inspection revealed that the pipes in our house were made from lead. I felt terrible. I couldn’t let my son be poisoned in our home. I was forced to break my lease so that my children and I could avoid further lead exposure. Soon, we ended up in a shelter for a few months, until my own health took a turn for the worse and we moved back in with family.
As parents, we do everything in our power to keep our children safe and healthy, but there was only so much I could do to protect my children from our country's crumbling infrastructure.
For years, I did not feel comfortable sharing my story with others. I worried that they wouldn’t understand. Eventually, I opened up to my church about what my sons and I had gone through. Other members of the community came forward to let me know that I wasn’t alone, including one mother who told me her kids had also developed lead poisoning. The love and support I received inspired me to become a parent advocate for the Coalition on Lead Emergency (COLE), an organization of Milwaukee residents concerned about the presence of lead in our community.
After years of outreach and education, we are finally seeing progress in our community. Earlier this year, I shared our story with Vice President Kamala Harris when she visited Milwaukee. Harris told me about the investments the Biden-Harris administration is making to strengthen America’s infrastructure, including billions in funding to replace all the lead paint and lead pipes across the country. Leaders have been talking about infrastructure investments for years. It was the Biden administration that finally made it happen.
The Biden administration's Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan will make our country lead-free and create high-paying jobs that support families across the country. Here in Milwaukee, COLE is doing its part to train workers to be able to safely remove lead laterals from homes. Unfortunately, there are a lot of lead pipes in Milwaukee — nearly 70,000 out of more than 170,000 statewide. This federal funding will massively accelerate our efforts to remove them and protect children like Aidan.
Aidan is almost 9 now and, together, we have put together a book educating children about the dangers of lead. It’s the story of “Super Aidan, The Lead Free Superhero,” who flies across the city of Milwaukee to teach children how to defeat the evil lead monster. We have been working with our public library system and local schools here in Milwaukee to share the story.
Although my sons and I have moved into a safe home, it’s still hard to trust the water flowing from our sink after what we experienced. We now use a lead filter and rely a lot on bottled water. Our family needs time to recover from the trauma we experienced, but thanks to the Biden administration’s investments in lead replacement, we know that soon we will never have to worry about being exposed to that poison again. These investments are already doing so much to ease my mind — and the minds of so many mothers out there.
Deanna Branch lives with her sons Aidan and Jaidyn in Milwaukee, where she is a parent advocate for the Coalition on Lead Emergency.https://captimes.com/captimes/opinion/guest-columns/opinion-thanks-to-biden-theres-big-progress-on-lead-pipes/article_e846cab0-fe51-5f7c-9bb5-ea68ce4c642f.html
