Drawing on historic sources as well as present-day interviews, Lead Babies and Poisoned Housing is a story about systemic racism, environmental injustice, and the failure of government.
In 2016, 1, 100 mainly minority residents of a low-income housing complex in East Chicago, Indiana, received a letter from the city forcibly evicting them from their homes because a high level of lead was found in the soil under their houses. The residents were given two months to move. Many could not find safe housing nearby. The site was designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Superfund site because of the large amount of toxic material on it. More than 1, 300 similar sites are located throughout the United States. Over 70 million people live within three miles of one of these sites.
Five years later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General charged three federal agencies—EPA, HUD, and CDC—with causing the lead poisoning of children living in the complex. The EPA, responsible for the cleanup, had been aware of the situation for 35 years. The director of the local housing authority admitted to building the complex over a demolished lead smelter. When health issues arose, the housing authority blamed the residents’ sanitary habits rather than its own failure to maintain the structures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s testing of blood lead levels was revealed to be faulty. In short, the very agencies that were supposed to protect these people instead neglected, ignored, and blamed them.
But this isn’t just a story of victimization; it is also about empowerment and community members insisting their voices be heard. Lead Babies and Poisoned Housing records the human side of what happens when the industries responsible for polluting leave, but the residents remain. Those residents tell their stories in their own words—not just what happened to them, but how they acted in response. We should listen, not only for justice, but as a cautionary tale against repeated history.
İçerik tablosu
List of Characters
Prologue: Akeeshea’s Kitchen Table
Dave Perez’s Story: Living in East Chicago
The Neighborhood
PART 1. THE CAUSES
Akeeshea Daniels’s Story: Living at the West Calumet Housing Complex
1. Geological Conditions
Phil Ponce’s Story: Working at a Steel Mill
2. Industrialization
Todd Dornick’s Story: Working at a Lead Smelter
3. The Workforce
PART 2. THE PROTECTION AGENCIES
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA)
Maritza Lopez’s Story
4. Establishing EPA: An Oxymoronic Structure
Carole Dougherty and Barbara Hanna Moore Have a Conversation: Pollution
5. How EPA Failed the People of the West Calumet Housing Complex, 1970–1985: Industrial Indifference, Ducks and Swans, Game of Tag
Mary Irizarry’s Story
6. How EPA Failed the People of the West Calumet Housing Complex,
1986–2012: Living with Lead
Liduvina Espinosa’s Story: Lead Houses
7. How EPA Failed the People of the West Calumet Housing Complex,
2013–2016: An Archaeological Discovery
DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT (HUD)
Clamae Bullock’s Story
8. Establishing HUD: Urban Displacement, Housing Shortage, Government-Sanctioned Segregation Sherry Hunter’s Story: It’s Not a Project
9. Something Rotten in the City of East Chicago: The Politics of Housing
Dante Dinkins’s Story: Lead Babies in Lead Houses
10. Building the West Calumet Housing Complex: Kickbacks, Cheap
Construction, Low Maintenance, Negligent Reporting
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC)
Carole’s and Barbara’s Stories, Continued: Racism
11. Establishing CDC: Community Health vs. Politics
Nayesa Walker’s Story
12. Lead Poisoning and Racial Injustice: Researching the Causes
and Symptoms, Searching for Treatments
Julius Morris’s Story
13. Arsenic and Old Lace in East Chicago: Faulty Analyses,
Invalid Reports, Misleading Results
PART 3. THE LEAD CRISIS
Demetra Turner’s Lament
14. Eviction
Jalen’s Story
15. School Closin
PART 4. AFTER THE EXODUS
16. Demolition
17. Redevelopment
Afterword
Author’s Notes
Glossary and Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author
Yazar hakkında
Carolyn R. Boiarsky is an investigative reporter and academic. She began her career as Statehouse correspondent for United Press International (UPI) in 1964, one of only a few female investigative reporters in the country at that time. She went on to become a television news reporter for the West Virginia CBS affiliate WCHS-TV. She has published in the New Republic, the Progressive, and various newspaper Sunday supplements. Later she became a professor of English at Purdue University Northwest, authoring five books on teaching composition and professional writing. She also founded the Northwest Indiana Writing Project. Recently, she retired, returning to her first career as a writer with her book Lead Babies and Poisoned Housing.
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