Why don't Trump and RFK Jr. Milwaukee help with his lead poisoning crisis?

For many months, the city of Milwaukee has been struggling temporarily with a lead poisoning crisis that has forced at least four schools, and more to undergo strict inspections.

It began on January 13, when Milwaukee notified the parents in the three to five class for the first time with the school that a child had tested a positive degree of lead in the blood. The local health officers found that lead exposure in the child's house did not occur, which left their school as an obvious guilty.

The city's investigators found broken lead paint and lead shop dust throughout the school building. Press and government reports indicate that the school district had difficulties due to lack of funds and workers to keep up with inquiries from painting. The local officials soon found that they had a big problem in their hands, since the vast majority of the city's school buildings (around 125 out of 150) before 1978 was banned as lead color.

Lead, a dangerous neurotoxin that can lead to developmental problems in children after a long exposure, has now been found in at least nine public schools, and at least four students have tested a positive way for high lead values ​​in the blood. So far, no children have been hospitalized for acute lead poisoning, which can be life -threatening, but the children concerned continue to be monitored. Several buildings were temporarily closed so that workers can make a deep cleaning. Milwaukee inspected all public schools on lead to complete the review by September.

Usually cities could depend on the control and prevention of diseases for the support of the federal government on such a crisis. When the lead poisoning was discovered for the first time in January at the end of the bidges administration, the city's health officers immediately contacted the CDC Environmental Health Team, which included some of the country's best leading poisoning, Mike Totoraitis told me Totoraitis. A group of federal experts planned a trip to the city at the end of April.

But not more. At the beginning of April, the Trump government submitted Milwaukee's application for support, since nobody in the government's salary statement could deliver the specialist knowledge of the leading poisoning that the city needs.

On April 1, the lead exposure team within the National Center for Environmental Health of the CDC was released as part of the Minister of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by the massive restructuring of the Federal Ministry of Health. The planned trip was canceled, and since then no federal officials in Milwaukee have helped a foot into the reaction.

“We talked to [the federal experts] Several times a week, “said Totoraitis,” before they were released. “

Milwaukee has promoted his own inspection and free blood test clinics. The city reported on May 13 that it had replaced 10,000 lead water services to remove another possible source of exposure for local children. But they have 55,000 more to go, and the local officials said they would need state or federal financing to end the job. (It is estimated that the city costs around 630 million US dollars.)

Usually, according to Totoraitis, the CDC experts would act as experts in the city and lead them through their epidemiological examinations. Federal civil servants are particularly clever in detective work, who can determine whether a child was exposed at home or at school. Milwauke's officials had recent experience with lead exposure in houses, but not in schools. They were based on the federal specialist knowledge of interpreting lead dust that were found during the school inspections. Without them they were left to navigate in a new and dangerous health threat.

“For this only purpose, they were there to get some of the best specialist knowledge of lead poisoning, and it is now gone,” said Totoraitis. “Now we have no experts on the CDC to reach them.”

In this unsafe new era for public health, Milwaukees can become too common: a city that committed to themselves in an emergency. What could have been a national scandal in the past could become too routinely.

This happens if the federal government does not respond to a health crisis

When I spoke to Totoraitis, he was already thinking about the next problem of public health he had to deal with. “If we have a new up -and -coming health problem that I don't have an internal know -how and the state does not, we don't have anyone that I can call now,” said Totoraitis. “This is a scary undertaking.”

He cannot be sure what kind of help he can get from the federal government, since the restructuring of the US Ministry of Health and the human service continues. The department has just hired hundreds of health workers who concentrated on safety at the workplace, but other teams, including the senior team, were not brought back.

The turbulence complicates to the local officials to keep an overview of which federal experts are still in the staff, where they are and who was actually released. However, the message is clear: President Donald Trump and his high -ranking MPs want the state and local governments to take over more of these responsibilities – without helping the government.

The US public health system has been set up in such a way that the state and local health departments are the front, monitoring problems and providing staff in a crisis. The federal government provides knowledge that state and local officials probably do not have alone. Totoraitis was dependent on this; Before this year's emergency, Milwaukee was inexperienced by lead exposure in large public buildings. (Since then, one of the dismissed CDC scientists has tried to report voluntarily to help Milwaukee recently reported.

Health crises occur constantly. At the moment there is a small outbreak of tuberculosis in Kansas; A city in Florida experienced the unexpected spread of hepatitis in December last December. A dozen people were hospitalized in a breakout in Listeria. And the United States is currently facing measles on measles in decades, with more than 1,000 people being sick. Once the local officials said that the Federal Government lowered the financing for the outbreak response as part of a massive setback from federal funds at the end of March, although the CDC has since sent additional workers to West texas where the outbreak was created.

In the past, there was little doubt that the federal government would appear in these scenarios. But Totoraitis warns that Milwaukee's experience in the past few months, which could be committed to themselves in an emergency, could soon be repeated elsewhere.

“Let's assume St. Louis will be in a similar situation next year – you could call us, but we don't have the bandwidth to consistently support you,” said Totoraitis. “Unfortunately, this is a good example of how quickly changes in the federal government can influence the local government.”

Children are poisoned by lead. Trump lets it happen.

Kennedy, Trump and Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency cut 10,000 jobs from US health authorities this spring. The costs for these losses will be felt every time a city is confronted with an unexpected health threat. Today, in Milwaukee, families are facing the fear and uncertainty of lead exposure – and they know that Federal Aid does not come. A Milwaukee mother recently said ABC News: “It really sends the message from 'You don't care.'”