New law will protect generations from toxic lead paint

We knew our message had gotten through. We hoped it would be enough.

Over the past few weeks, the Lead Free Philly Coalition, led by PCCY’s Colleen McCauley, visited with members of City Council to discuss for the last time the desperate need to enact a new lead paint law to protect very young children.  

PCCY supporters heeded our calls on social media and email alerts and reached out to their council members. Parents urged us to stick the landing.

And then, on Thursday, after impassioned testimony from lead law proponents, including one from Picasso Project Director Tim Gibbon who shared his own harrowing experience regarding his daughter’s lead poisoning, which necessitated a hasty move out of their rental, the final vote was called.

The assembled members of Council voted unanimously in favor, briefly stunning the gallery until they erupted in cheers and a prolonged standing ovation.

Effective October 2020, the City of Philadelphia, which will require landlords to test their pre-1978 properties for lead every four years, will boast one of the nation’s most protective ordinances, preventing the vast majority of the 1,500 cases of childhood lead poisonings reported every year.

This week’s dramatic lead law victory, resulting in Philadelphia’s most significant public health initiative since the smoking ban in 2006, was decades in the making. 

For more than twenty years, PCCY has been the galvanizing force in the city in the fight to protect kids from deadly lead paint, seeping out through the cracks in walls and settling on home surfaces well within the inadvertent reach of crawling toddlers.

Shelly Yanoff, who lead PCCY for 26 years (she retired in 2012), started the work on poisoning prevention well before the issue reached the mainstream, starting with a modest hepa-vac lending service for parents.

She was soon joined by Colleen and a PCCY-led coalition, and their work, along with a powerful collaboration with Councilperson Blondell Reynolds Brown, culminated in Philadelphia’s lead law in 2011.

But due to a last-minute amendment to the legislation which would ultimately render the law unenforceable, what should have been a triumph was relegated to heartbreak and poisoning rates remained intractably high.

Intractable, that is, until this week.

As Shelly and Colleen shared a teary-eyed celebratory embrace after the vote, their sense of relief was palpable.

Colleen’s work now shifts from tireless dialogue and advocacy to vigorous scrutiny with stakeholders and city officials to implement the landmark law.

This week’s victory, of course, would not have been possible without the help of so many. While we’ve listed just a few in this space, please refer to our Facebook page for a comprehensive list.

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THANK YOU

Blondell Reynolds Brown & her staff

All City Council Members

Lead Free Philly Coalition Organizational members:
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Clean Water Action
Community Legal Services
Conservation Voters of PA
F & L Lead Dust Inspectors
Fair Housing Rights Center
Get the Lead Out Riverwards
Green & Healthy Homes Initiative
Health Partners Plans
Keystone First
Lead Safe Technicians
National Nurse-Led Care Consortium
Nurse Family Partnership
Overbrook Environmental Center
Public Interest Law Center
Shirley’s Painting, Lead Abatement, and Interim Control Contractor
TURN

Individual Coalition members:
Dr. Tom Vernon, MD
Dr. Joan Adler, MD
Dr. Barbara Gold, MD
Dr. Hans Kersten, MD
Jana Curtis, Parent
Rachel Kaminski, Parent

Funders:
Philadelphia Health Partnership
Independence Foundation

Additional Key Partners:
Reinvestment Fund
Philly Office Retail
Shift Capital