Lead Babies and Poisoned Housing: Environmental Injustice, Systemic Racism, and Governmental Failure, Carolyn R. Boiarsky

In 2016, 1,100 mainly minority residents of a low-income housing complex in East Chicago, Indiana, received a letter from the city forcibly evicting them from their homes because a high level of lead was found in the soil under their houses. The residents were given two months to move. Many could not find safe housing nearby. The site was designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Superfund site because of the large amount of toxic material on it. More than 1,300 similar sites are located throughout the United States. Over 70 million people live within three miles of one of these sites.

Five years later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General charged three federal agencies—EPA, HUD, CDC—with causing the lead poisoning of children living in the complex. The EPA, responsible for the cleanup, had been aware of the situation for 35 years. The director of the local housing authority admitted to building the complex over a demolished lead smelter. When health issues arose, the housing authority blamed the residents' sanitary habits rather than its own failure to maintain the structures. The Center for Disease Control's testing of blood lead levels was revealed to be faulty. In short, the very agencies that were supposed to protect these people instead neglected, ignored, and blamed them.