By J. David Goodman, Al Baker and James Glanz
Mikaila Bonaparte has spent her entire
life under the roof of the New York City Housing Authority, the oldest
and largest public housing system in the country, where as a toddler she
nibbled on paint chips that flaked to the floor. In the summer of 2016,
when she was not quite 3 years old, a test by her doctor showed she had
lead in her blood at levels rarely seen in modern New York.
A
retest two days later revealed an even higher level, one more commonly
found in factory or construction workers and, in some cases, enough to
cause irreversible brain damage.
Within
two weeks, a city health inspector visited the two Brooklyn public
housing apartments where Mikaila spent her time — her mother’s in the
Tompkins Houses; her grandmother’s in the Gowanus Houses — to look for
the source of the lead exposure, records show. The inspector, wielding a
hand-held device that can detect lead through multiple layers of paint,
found the dangerous heavy metal in both homes. The Health Department
ordered the Housing Authority to fix the problems.
The discovery spurred the Housing Authority to action: It challenged the results.
Rather
than remove or cover the lead, the Housing Authority dispatched its own
inspector who used a different test, documents show. The agency
insisted that however Mikaila was poisoned, there was no lead in her
apartments.
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Source: The New York Times (via Empire Report New York)
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