Onondaga County and the city of Syracuse have failed to properly enforce the measures they’ve put in place to stop children from being poisoned by lead, lead poisoning prevention advocates alleged in a new report.
The report analyzed data from the city and county obtained through public records requests. Advocates from Families For Lead Freedom Now said the report has been years in the making. Advocates hope the report shines a light on how local families fall through the cracks of municipal policy meant to help prevent lead poisoning, specifically Syracuse’s 2020 lead ordinance, they said.
Families For Lead Freedom Now’s report comes at a time when the city and county are dealing with a multi-pronged lead poisoning crisis. In both cases, County Health Department Data shows that almost every one in 10 children tested shows elevated blood lead levels, meaning they are at an even greater risk of suffering the potentially life altering health effects of lead poisoning.
Both localities deal with the lead paint and dust released by the friction generated on surfaces like windows, doors, and porches found in housing all over the county. The dust that covers those surfaces is also released to the outside of homes, which affects children playing in their own yards, said Oceanna Fair, a member of Families For Lead Freedom Now.
Children, particularly in the city, face another risk of lead poisoning: drinking water coming from lead pipes. About 42% of the city’s water service lines are made out of lead, according to the State Department of Health.
The consequences of high exposure to lead are severe and can include changes to children’s brain development, and cause other ailments like anaemia, hypertension, renal impairment, and immunotoxicity, according to the World Health Organization.
“Our kids are being exposed in multiple areas, and their bodies aren’t getting a break,” Fair said.
Policies like Syracuse’s lead ordinance passed in 2020, advocates wrote in the report titled “Falling Through the Cracks,” are not going far enough to protect residents from lead poisoning.
The ordinance allowed the city’s Division of Code Enforcement to cite landlords for the presence of deteriorating lead paint and lead dust in the home. The ordinance requires code officers performing inspections related to other programs that ensure safe housing conditions like the Rental Registry Program to inspect for chipping paint and lead dust as part of the check-up and certification of the property.
Falling Through the Cracks Syracuse 2025 by info
Property owners are expected to remediate the presence of lead using contractors certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Advocates were already skeptical of the ordinance’s ability to prevent lead poisoning in 2022, when the ordinance went into effect after years of no enforcement.
In their report, advocates reviewing city and county data wrote that while code enforcement has issued more citations for lead poisoning hazards since enforcing the ordinance, the number of children who show elevated blood lead levels has remained high. About 9.4% of children tested for elevated blood-lead levels tested positive in 2024, according to data from the Onondaga County Health Department.
Advocates also argue that low-compliance with the city’s rental registry, a city program meant to proactively inspect homes for safe housing conditions every three years, lessens the impact of the lead ordinance.
Fewer than 50% of the eligible properties in the program have a certificate of compliance with the Rental Registry, and only approximately half of the qualifying properties are shown in the city’s open data portal, according to a report released earlier this year by City Auditor Alex Marion.
“They are only inspecting and re-inspecting those units that are on the registry, they are not being more forceful about units that are not on the registry,” Fair said.
A bulk of the code violations for lead poisoning hazards also tend to concentrate on properties owned by a handful of landlords who are repeat offenders. Central Current has reported on at least two landlords who combined accumulated around 750 city code violations related to lead poisoning across a total of 41 properties.
This is also a phenomenon found in County Health Department Data. Advocates wrote that more than 20% of properties (or 151) that were cited by the County Health Department, who intervene when a child shows elevated blood lead levels, have had multiple county violations in the past six years.
About 100 of these properties have been issued multiple citations within a two-year timeframe. Many of them have previous code violations for lead issued by the city, advocates wrote.
“Some landlords are being cited repeatedly, and their properties remain hazardous, yet open for business,” said Kiara Van Brackle, a clinical neuroscientist and a member of Families For Lead Freedom Now. “That is allowing multiple children to be poisoned at the same addresses. When that family leaves, another family is ready to inhabit that space.”
Advocates also made a list of recommendations for the city and county to implement and reduce the number of children with elevated blood lead levels in the county. The enforcement, and public auditing of Rochester’s lead ordinance, advocates wrote, should be a model for Syracuse to follow.
Rochester has taken multiple opportunities to publicly audit its lead paint ordinance enforcement and meet with the public housing authority, city school district, and Monroe County to work on lead poisoning prevention, advocates wrote. That city also established a citizen advisory group to inform implementation of the ordinance.
Those measures, advocates wrote, contributed to a decline in children who showed elevated blood lead levels when they were tested. In 2012, about 14% of children tested in Monroe County showed elevated blood lead levels, compared to 6% in 2021.
Advocates made other recommendations like more thorough inspections. Inspectors in Syracuse should also include interior and exterior paint inspections, as well as water service line checkups as part of the rental registry program, Fair said. Additionally, the city and county should help tenants and landlords know their rights and best practices for lead poisoning prevention, she added.
Advocates also recommended proactively checking and compelling owners of vacant properties to remediate lead hazards before renting to new families.
“The city and the county need to be making sure that even if the family moves from the property, that they still follow through remediation with the landlords for when the next family moves in,” Fair added.
Other recommendations include tighter enforcement of the rental registry and better cooperation between the city and county to ensure there is coordination when a property is repeatedly cited for lead-based violations by both entities. Both entities should also pursue more aggressive fines for non-compliance and ensure they can take legal action against non-compliant property owners, Fair said.
“They’re both looking at lead from a different angle, they should both cooperate,” Fair said. “Both entities should be compounding their enforcement to make sure that we’re getting compliance, because what we’re doing now isn’t working.
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