Public health authorities in Rhode Island could soon be drafting and implementing a statewide plan to clean up tens of thousands of older homes contaminated with lead-based paint. With the cost to clean one home estimated at up to $15,000, and with 200,000 to 300,000 Rhode Island homes contaminated

Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein in March ordered paint and pigment makers Sherwin-Williams Company, NL Industries Inc. and Millennium Holdings LLC, to clean up the public nuisance they had created in Rhode Island by formerly marketing and selling lead-based paint in the state. To ensure it is done correctly, the state--working with a court-appointed public health official--will handle the statewide remediation effort.

"This is a hugely significant piece of litigation because it attempts to bring to the table wrong-doers to prospectively help solve a public health problem," John J. McConnell Jr., the lawyer who tried the case for the state, told The Nation's Health. "It says that the wrong-doers must help clean up this public health mess before a child is poisoned because of their complicity in causing the problem in the first place."

The public health official chosen by the court to help carry out the state's clean-up plan will likely be someone "with a national reputation in this area," McConnell said.

The final order, handed down March 16, was in line with a February 2006 jury verdict that found the three former lead paint manufacturers guilty of creating a public nuisance in Rhode Island. With their bid for a new trial rejected, the three paint companies have filed appeals to Rhode Island's Supreme Court.

The state's struggle to make the lead paint industry pay for its mistakes began in 1999, when Rhode Island became the first state in the nation to file suit against several paint manufacturers and a lead industry trade association. The lawsuit, which contended that the defendants knew the products they were selling were toxic, ended in 2002 with a deadlocked jury. In 2005, state Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch filed a new suit based on public nuisance laws, which ended in favor of the state.

A nuisance claim can prevent paint makers from arguing that one company's paint cannot be distinguished from another's, or from contending that they had stopped adding lead to their paints more than 30 years earlier. A public nuisance can occur when a defendant interferes in an unreasonable way with the health, safety, peace or comfort that is common to the general public or a number of people.

"Public nuisance seems to be the legal principle that holds the most promise for these kinds of actions," said APHA member Rick Rabin, MSPH, lead registry coordinator for the Massachusetts Department of Labor. "A number of other legal principles have been tried, but didn't succeed."

Rabin noted that other lead paint lawsuits are now moving through the courts in Milwaukee, St. Louis, New Jersey, Ohio and California.

Rabin, a child lead poisoning activist for more than 20 years, was instrumental in bringing about the nation's first private lawsuit against a former lead paint manufacturer in Massachusetts in the 1980s.

Beginning in the 1940s, paint companies gradually reduced the amount of lead they were putting in their paints, "but by no means eliminated it," Rabin said. In 1955, most paint companies voluntarily reduced the amount of lead in their indoor paints to 1 percent or less, Rabin said.

"Before that, it could be anywhere from almost 100 percent on down," Rabin said. "It varied widely."

The federal government banned lead paint for residential use in 1978, but Rhode Island estimates that lead paint continues to contaminate about 250,000 older homes in the state. Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 24 million housing units contain deteriorating lead paint and elevated levels of lead-contaminated house dust. Lead is a neurotoxin that can affect brain development and cognitive abilities. Very high levels can kill a child.

Roberta Hazen Aaronson, MSW, executive director of Rhode Island's Childhood Lead Action Project, a statewide organization that works to eliminate childhood lead poisoning through education and advocacy, called the judgment a "home run for kids in the state and a home run for environmental and social justice."

"Kids are poisoned by having lousy housing, and it's poor kids and children of color that are disproportionately affected," Aaronson said. "Lead poisoning is not an equal opportunity disease."

For more information, visit www.leadsafekids.org.