Latest news with #Epi-Aid
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Sen. Baldwin, Rep. Moore call firings of lead poisoning experts 'haphazard,' urge their return amid Milwaukee lead crisis
Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Gwen Moore called on the nation's top health official to reinstate fired lead poisoning experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who were helping with a lead contamination crisis in Milwaukee. The two Congressional members, both Democrats, made the call in a letter this week to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose agency laid off thousands of health workers, including its lead poisoning prevention branch, early this month. They also urged Kennedy to approve a formal request from city health officials for federal help, called Epi-Aid, with responding to widespread lead contamination at Milwaukee Public Schools, where district officials lost control of pervasive lead hazards in most of its school buildings. On April 3, officials with the Milwaukee Health Department received an email from a CDC official saying the request was denied "due to the complete loss of our Lead Program." The denial came two days after all of the CDC employees part of Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch were laid off, part of sweeping layoffs at the Health and Human Services department, or HHS, according to national news reports. More: CDC denies Milwaukee's request for help with MPS lead poisoning probe. RFK Jr. slashed jobs. "This haphazard approach to gutting the federal workforce is misguided and has resulted in unacceptable mistakes at the agency charged with safeguarding the public's health," the letter to Kennedy said. "You have the ability to immediately rectify this issue, and we urge you to do so." The layoffs are part of an overhaul of HHS that Kennedy says will streamline operations, make them more efficient and eliminate redundancies. The overhaul includes closing some regional offices, consolidating divisions and creating a new Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA. In statements, HHS has said the reorganization "is not affecting critical regional and national efforts." "HHS is planning to continue the important work of the lead poisoning prevention and surveillance branch that works to eliminate lead poisoning under the Administration for a Healthy America," said Emily G. Hilliard, deputy press secretary at HHS, in a previous email. In the letter, the two Congresswomen said the firings have affected key programs already and warned of "lasting consequences for young children in Milwaukee." "This assistance is needed in Milwaukee now," they said. In their request, made in late March, Milwaukee health officials had asked for a small team of CDC experts to come to Milwaukee to help at lead testing clinics and to lend their expertise in the lead response. Until the request was denied, the plan was for a team of three or four people to come to Milwaukee for four to five weeks, with the option of extending the visit, Milwaukee Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis said in a press conference last week. "These were the top experts in the field for lead exposure," he said. "These are folks that see lead issues at a much larger scale than we do normally here in Milwaukee." City health officials had been working closely with lead poisoning experts at the CDC since early February, the month after they discovered an MPS school with flaking paint was the source of lead poisoning in a Milwaukee child. Health officials suspected that lead paint hazards, identified in seven schools by mid-March, were more widespread, and they were working with the CDC experts on a plan to ramp up testing of school children's blood lead levels. Then, the layoffs came. "We don't have any contacts at the CDC for childhood lead poisoning," Totoraitis said in the press conference April 14. "This is a pretty unprecedented scenario to not have someone to turn to at the CDC." In their letter, Baldwin and Moore pointed to past comments by Kennedy suggesting that some of the program cuts may have been mistaken and that the lead program was one of them. But he later walked back those comments, saying the programs had been consolidated, CBS News reported. MPS has more than 100 schools built before lead paint was banned. The district assumes they all have lead-based paint. It's considered safe as long as it's contained. When it starts peeling, cracking or chalking, it can pose a hazard to children who might ingest or inhale it. Over the last three decades, MPS cut most of its painting staff, stopped providing regular "painting days" and shifted painting costs onto individual schools. City health officials said it appeared MPS had not kept up with annual inspections of its schools for lead. MPS officials have pledged to improve internal systems amid demands from school board members and parents. The district will also stop requiring principals to cover painting costs with individual school budgets, Superintendent Brenda Cassellius has said. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Baldwin, Moore urge RFK Jr. to reinstate fired lead poisoning experts
New York Times
18-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Milwaukee's Lead Crisis: Flaky Paint, Closed Schools and a C.D.C. in Retreat
Milwaukee is facing a deepening lead crisis in its schools, and it suddenly finds itself without help from the country's top public health agency. Four children in the Milwaukee Public Schools have been found to be exposed to high levels of lead in the last six months. Investigators have discovered seven schools with flaking lead paint and lead dust inside classrooms and basements. Three school buildings have been shuttered so far, and officials said that more are expected to follow — as soon as next week — as the investigation expands. In the past, school districts have turned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help manage lead problems. But weeks ago, the commissioner of the Milwaukee health department was told that a toxicologist and epidemiologist from the C.D.C., both lead experts who were expected to assist city officials with the local response, had been fired from the agency. Then the Milwaukee health department was dealt an even sharper blow: Its request for federal assistance from C.D.C. experts to help manage the lead crisis, known as an Epi-Aid, had been formally denied. 'There is no bat phone anymore,' Dr. Michael Totoraitis, the Milwaukee health commissioner, said in an interview. 'I can't pick up and call my colleagues at the C.D.C. about lead poisoning anymore.' The C.D.C. is already reeling from layoffs targeting 2,400 employees, nearly one-fifth of its work force. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the C.D.C., did not respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has said that it is cutting positions throughout the federal government to reduce spending and bureaucratic bloat. Cuts to the federal government are affecting communities all over the country in ways that few Americans could have foreseen. While lead problems in the Milwaukee schools were not caused by any federal institution, the C.D.C. had the power to help solve them. C.D.C. cuts could quickly threaten public health, experts say, pointing to reductions in agency resources to promote environmental health and prevent communicable disease. As Milwaukee officials navigate the crisis alone, they are doing so amid rising fury and fear from parents. The first case of lead poisoning was discovered late last year, when a routine blood test showed elevated lead levels in a child who attends a public school. The health department investigated the child's home but found no lead hazards present. Then they turned to the child's elementary school, Golda Meir School, and found lead dust on windowsills and floors — the dust contained six times the federal threshold of lead. It was the first known time that a child in Milwaukee had been poisoned by lead traced to a public school, health officials said. Lead is an omnipresent threat to children in Milwaukee, especially in its poorest neighborhoods. Much of Milwaukee's housing stock was built in the 19th and early 20th century, when the manufacturing industry was expanding, and along with it, rows of brick bungalows and cottages that still line city blocks today. Before it was banned in the 1970s, lead was a common material in paint, and while there have been efforts for decades to eradicate it, lead is still commonly found in water, pipes, the soil in Milwaukee backyards and in older houses that have not been renovated. Children in Milwaukee suffer from especially high rates of lead poisoning: In some census tracts on the north side, more than 20 percent of children under 6 years old had high levels of lead in their blood, according to state health data. 'Everybody in Milwaukee is aware of lead,' said Lisa Lucas, whose daughter attends an elementary school that has been closed for lead remediation. 'There's lead paint in almost all of the schools and buildings. And nobody has really stepped up, either in the city or the state legislature, to make our city safer and healthier for everybody. That's the most frustrating part of it.' But the discovery of lead poisoning tied to school buildings has shaken parents from all over the city. 'Frankly, I just sort of trusted that there would have been appropriate upkeep in the facilities, especially following what was happening with Covid,' said Kristen Payne, a parent whose oldest child attends Golda Meir. 'I was really surprised to see the extent of the problem.' Parents and advocates for safe schools say that the response from the school district has been slow and insufficient, and they have focused most of their frustration on the local government's handling of the crisis. They have asked why the district has failed to maintain its buildings and inspect for peeling lead-based paint. Most public school buildings in Milwaukee were built before 1978, when the sale of lead paint was banned. Other cities that have dealt with lead contamination have received extensive guidance and resources from experts in the C.D.C. During the lead water crisis in Flint, Mich., a decade ago, the C.D.C. helped state and local officials develop a response and recovery plan, and provided funding for a voluntary lead exposure registry. A top schools official in Milwaukee who oversaw building maintenance, Sean Kane, left his job earlier this month after the uproar over the lead contamination began to build. In the last 30 years, 85 percent of the school district's painting staff has been eliminated, allowing instances of peeling, flaking lead paint to multiply, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Last week, the closed school buildings were locked and quiet, with trucks for a painting company parked outside. Students, teachers and administrators were conducting classes in other school buildings that had room to spare, though some parents said they were too afraid of the lead threat to send their children to school anywhere in the district. The district has already spent $1.8 million on lead remediation, a small fraction of what the costs could eventually total. Marty Kanarek, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied lead poisoning for nearly 50 years, said that while Milwaukee has made progress in identifying sources of lead, the threat to children, especially in low-income neighborhoods, still remains. No amount of lead is safe to ingest, and lead poisoning can cause damage to children's nervous systems and brains, as well as learning and behavioral problems. 'It's a massive problem which requires lots of money,' he said. 'Lead is the one that is the most serious for its effects on kids. Lead is this pervasive thing, and it really hurts kids' brains.' Last week, city officials held a virtual town hall meeting attended by hundreds of parents — the first one since the crisis began — to answer questions about the lead issues and try to calm worries. Dr. Brenda Cassellius, superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, offered no timeline on when school buildings could reopen. In an interview, Dr. Cassellius said that principals had been required to take many school maintenance costs out of their own budgets. Forced to choose between fixing peeling paint or hiring more staff, for instance, they often chose to skip the maintenance. 'Schools have been so terribly underfunded for so many years,' she said. 'You're often faced with a really tough choice of whether students get additional support for literacy and a paraprofessional in the classroom to help those who are maybe needing a little bit extra help — or painting or fixing something within your building.' Some community organizations have tried to fill the gaps between the public and the city government. Melody McCurtis, the deputy director and lead organizer of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, a community organization, has been going door to door, informing residents of the problems with lead and distributing free lead filters to hundreds of households. 'I think that this is the first time that parents and communities are really pushing back,' Ms. McCurtis said. Some assistance could be coming from the state. Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, a Democrat, recently unveiled a plan to invest more than $300 million statewide to reduce lead poisoning in homes and schools. But Milwaukee officials said the price tag for fixing the schools' lead problems could be astronomical, and they are not counting on help from the federal government in the future. The work of the health department 'has not stopped,' said Caroline Reinwald, a spokeswoman for the Milwaukee health department. 'This only underscores the importance of the role local public health plays in protecting communities — and the challenges we now face without federal expertise to call on.'
CNN
07-04-2025
- Health
- CNN
A city responding to a lead crisis in schools reached out to the CDC for help. The agency's lead experts were just fired
A few months ago, a test revealed that a child in Milwaukee had elevated levels of lead in their blood. The results triggered an investigation into the family's home, then the child's school and then more aging school buildings still riddled with lead paint. With 68,000 students in the Milwaukee Public Schools district and dozens of buildings potentially affected, the city's health commissioner, Dr. Michael Totoraitis, knew that he needed more help, so he reached out to the National Center for Environmental Health, a division of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to make a plan to address the threat. For the past two months, Totoraitis has been working with a medical toxicologist to triage, essentially, which schools and children might need additional screening and how to understand the lead levels they might find. On Tuesday, he got an email that made his stomach drop. The environmental health team he had been working with at the CDC had been cut, swept up in a massive layoff of federal health workers that's hitting entire divisions of some agencies. Many employees were immediately placed on administrative leave and are no longer able to access their work. 'They were able to send a last email giving us new points of contact, but the new points of contact were essentially unable to say what level of support they would provide us moving forward,' Totoraitis said. Totoraitis had also put in a request for Epi-Aid, a short-term loan of an officer from the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service, or EIS. These officers, often called 'disease detectives,' are sent to state and local health departments to investigate urgent public health problems. The commissioner hoped an additional person would help scale up testing programs at the schools to help reach the most vulnerable students, those whose families might not be able to follow through on the school district's recommendation to see a pediatrician for testing. So far, the EIS program hasn't been affected, but with deep cuts elsewhere at the agency, Totoraitis said he wasn't sure the Epi-Aid would come through, either. 'We have issues with the transportation and access and busy parents, and being able to bring the testing to the schools, or to a community center near a school, is an effective strategy that worked really well during the pandemic,' he said. 'We're trying to replicate that here.' When US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the restructuring of his sprawling agency last week, he pledged that the organization would elevate a new priority: 'ending America's epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.' The CDC lost roughly 2,500 workers on Tuesday. In some cases, whole divisions and programs were wiped out. One of those was the Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch in the agency's National Center for Environmental Health. 'We no longer have lead experts,' said a person at the agency who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were not authorized to share the information. The EIS program remains, but an officer from that program would have coordinated with experts in the lead program and won't be able to do that now. 'So we won't be able to provide that service at this time,' the person said, adding that the CDC may be able to send someone to help but that the help provided might be different than it would have been before the cuts. The Milwaukee Department of Health put in its Epi-Aid request on March 26, city spokesperson Caroline Reinwald said. It typically takes two to three weeks to get an answer. The city has confirmation that the request was transferred from the National Center for Environmental Health to another branch of the CDC, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR. Last week, HHS said that office would be absorbed into a new agency, the Administration for a Healthy America, although it isn't clear when that will happen or how its priorities might change. HHS said Thursday that efforts to address lead issues would continue through ATSDR. ATSDR 'did not have any cuts in the reduction in force,' said Andrew Nixon, director of communications for the HHS. 'One of [ATSDR's] areas of focus is on toxic chemicals and this work with lead will continue there. The CDC is returning to its core mission of preparing for and responding to epidemics and outbreaks. Through the reorganization, HHS is reducing redundancies across the enterprise and consolidating efforts to better serve the American people.' The loss of the National Center for Environmental Health experts is the latest blow from the federal government to hit the Milwaukee health department, coming barely a week after it learned that it would lose about $5 million in government funding distributed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Milwaukee's funding was part of an $11.5 billion clawback by HHS. 'The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,' Nixon said in a statement about the cuts. Democratic governors and attorneys general in 23 states and DC filed suit against HHS and Kennedy this week, alleging that the department's sudden clawback of funding was unlawful and harmful. Totoraitis knows that 'Covid funding' sounds like cities and states were sitting on piles of money leftover from Covid tests or treatments, but they weren't. 'I think one of the real critical pieces is that they were funding Covid recovery, not Covid response,' Totoraitis said. Milwaukee was using a substantial chunk of that money to improve ventilation in congregate care settings like homeless shelters and nursing homes, 'places where a lot of people were sleeping, put everyone at highest risk for exposure and spread of flu and Covid,' he said. It won't be able to finish the project. It also had to end a partnership to train public health workers and another to start a neighborhood nursing program to visit people where they live. 'That was really frustrating,' Totoraitis said. The latest and most pressing threat for the city, however, is lead. Milwaukee's crisis began in January, after a child tested positive for an elevated level of lead in their blood. Children are considered exposed if they have lead levels above 3.5 micrograms per milliliter, according to the CDC. This child's level was closer to 15, Totoraitis said. Lead tastes sweet and is especially tempting to young children who are always putting their hands in their mouths and kids with developmental disabilities that make them susceptible to pica, the desire to eat things that aren't normally considered food. Lead is toxic to the brain, and exposure to even low levels can lower a child's IQ and contribute to problems with attention and behavior. The child's test results were sent to the Milwaukee health department, where they triggered an environmental investigation to find the source of the toxic heavy metal. These kinds of investigations are part of the critical work undertaken every day by local health departments to address health risks that might not be picked up any other way. Tests from the family's home and those of close relatives found nothing containing lead. Yet strangely, the child's lead level didn't drop as it should have if the threat had been removed. The child continued to be actively exposed to something, but where? 'That led us into the to the school, based on the further continued investigation with the family and the child,' Totoraitis said. Then, two other students in the district were found to also have high blood lead levels. From there, the problem snowballed. Tests of dust around the windowsills and on the floors at the child's elementary school found lead levels far above federal safety thresholds. Investigators zeroed in on lead paint in a basement bathroom as the likely source of the child's lead poisoning. As a next step, the city reviewed the school district's building records and discovered that 100 out of 150 buildings were built before 1978, when it was still legal to use lead in paint. Many had not been well-maintained. 'We were able to determine pretty quickly that there was widespread lead hazards in many of the schools,' Totoraitis said. The health department has identified seven schools with unsafe lead levels. As of Friday, three remain closed for cleanup. The department has held two free clinics for students and tested several hundred of them, but officials want to screen more. That will be difficult to do without the CDC's help. 'This is just another example of how quickly federal policy can affect local on the ground work,' Totoraitis said. 'I think, for a lot of our city residents who are following the lead crisis here in our schools, when we continue to update everybody, this is yet another complication to the work that we're doing.' It won't be the only place with challenges ahead. The extent of the cuts at the CDC and other health agencies isn't clear. Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said that local, state and federal health departments play equally important but different roles in supporting public health, like the legs on a stool. 'If you're cutting off one leg off a three-legged stool at its knees, the stool is going to fall over. It's going to cripple and fall down,' Freeman said. 'And I'm worried about our governmental public health system overall, when we are losing positions in key health agencies that support really crucial functions all day, every day, to keep people safe and healthy in counties and cities across this country.'
CBS News
03-04-2025
- Health
- CBS News
RFK Jr. says 20% of health agency layoffs could be mistakes
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested Thursday that around 20% of the job cuts by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency will be wrong and need to be corrected. Around 10,000 employees were laid off from the Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday, as part of a restructuring architected by Kennedy and Elon Musk's DOGE task force. But Kennedy acknowledged they didn't get everything right the first time. "Personnel that should not have been cut, were cut. We're reinstating them. And that was always the plan. Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we're going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we'll make mistakes," Kennedy said, speaking to reporters at a stop in Virginia. Kennedy said that the elimination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's entire Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch was among the mistakes. It is unclear which other programs Kennedy may be planning to restore. The department did not immediately provide a response for a request for comment. Multiple CDC officials said they had so far not heard of plans to reinstate the lead poisoning program. Among the immediate impacts of eliminating its work was an outstanding request from Milwaukee's health department for help responding to lead in water, which had stalled, multiple CDC officials said. Known as an "Epi-Aid," or investigation into a public health problem, the CDC assistance "will not be able to continue due to the loss of subject matter experts," agency officials had said internally this week. Elsewhere in the department, a handful of employees who got termination notices at the Food and Drug Administration have already been asked back to work temporarily, multiple FDA officials said. Among those asked to work for a few more weeks before they are cut include teams in the agency's inspections and investigations office, two officials said, after the agency's office lost around 170 employees. The office has been planning for cuts to routine inspections of drugmakers and food producers because of the layoffs.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
City loses federal help for MPS lead contamination probe after mass layoffs announced by RFK Jr.
The Milwaukee Health Department has lost the help of federal employees who were helping with lead contamination investigations at Milwaukee Public Schools. They were swept up in recent mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the city's health commissioner said. The employees, part of a division that focuses on lead poisoning prevention, were helping the city create a plan for mass testing of school children for lead, Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. They also had been on hand to help with technical questions arising during the investigation. The investigation started in January when it was found a child with lead poisoning had been exposed to lead-based paint at Golda Meir Lower Campus. The investigation has since expanded to more MPS schools, with seven identified as having lead hazards. A few schools were ordered closed for lead remediation. Totoraitis was notified Tuesday of the layoffs. The employees were part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health within HHS, he said. "To know that I can't call those staff anymore is really concerning," he said. It's also unclear what will happen with a request from the city to the CDC for Epi-Aid. That refers to experts the CDC would send to Milwaukee on a short-term basis to provide on-scene help. The Health Department put in the request on March 26, seeking help with the lead investigations, said spokesperson Caroline Reinwald. The request is pending. Totoraitis indicated he doesn't have much hope it will be fulfilled. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced plans to cut 10,000 employees at the federal agency. He also announced an overhaul of the department that included consolidating its 28 divisions into 15 and closing some regional offices. National news outlets have reported that entire divisions or programs within HHS were shuttered when all their employees were laid off. "The administrative realignment is not affecting critical regional and national efforts; instead, it is focused on eliminating redundancies and improving program efficiency," HHS Press Secretary Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano said in a statement. The layoffs come in the midst of federal funding cuts to state and local health departments. HHS agencies sent them notices cancelling billions of dollars in COVID-era grant funding. The Milwaukee Health Department expects to lose about $5 million in funding tied to four canceled grants, Totoraitis said. Most of the funds were meant to last through mid-2026. Under one of the grants, the department had planned to launch a new neighborhood nursing program with part of the $2.7 million in remaining, unspent funds. That program would have placed public health nurses and social workers in neighborhoods to support preventive care. Totoraitis said the department will be forced to scale back those plans and look for funding elsewhere to support the program. Wisconsin is one of nearly two dozen states suing HHS and Kennedy over the grant cancellations. The state say HHS went beyond its authority in arbitrarily canceling funding that Congress had already appropriated. The Health Department still plans to test thousands of MPS students for lead, with priority given to children at the ages and in the schools most at-risk, Totoraitis said. With the CDC increasingly "taking a back seat," Totoraitis said the department would rely on its local and state partners to address lead poisoning and other public health issues. Reporter Alison Dirr, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff, contributed to this report. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee loses federal help on lead probe after RFK Jr. fires workers
