Mapping the Lead Poisoning Solution in Kentucky

March 3, 2004

Geographic Information System (GIS) technology is alive and well in Kentucky state government, from mapping water resources, displaying economic development opportunities and accurately mapping underground mines. Now the Cabinet for Health & Family Services is using GIS as a tool in their Environmental Lead Program, working to eliminate lead poisoning as a public health concern.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), approximately 434,000 U.S. children aged 1-5 years have blood lead levels greater than the CDC recommended level of 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. And Kentucky ranks well below (6%) the national average (25%) when it comes to testing our children for blood lead levels.

The risks associated with lead poisoning can be severe, including causing learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and, at very high levels, seizures, coma, and even death. There are also loss to productivity costs associated with elevated blood lead levels and these costs can have a significant impact on future earnings potential of exposed children, in addition to related costs in health care, special education, criminal justice, and legal liability. That's why this important project, being implemented by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Division of Public Health Protection & Safety, Environmental Lead Program, is using GIS technology to help locate and eliminate the risks. The project team is being driven by two guiding questions:

• How do we identify where the highest risk of lead exposure occurs in Kentucky across a broad range of risk factors?
• How can we move children’s environmental health programs from a mitigative (“canary in the mine”) approach to a structure that is preventive?

The program is working to map the lead poisoning problem in Kentucky by looking at risk factors. For instance, where do we find clusters of houses built before 1950? Where is the poverty level highest? Where have there been a prevalence of elevated blood lead cases? Those factors and many more are being merged with census, tax and medicaid data, and then analyzed with GIS tools to accurately map the information.

According to Kenny Ratliff, co-investigator for the project, “In order to eliminate lead poisoning as a childhood disease in Kentucky, we must find ways to remove the potential hazards before children are exposed. Low quality housing is a major factor in limiting our children’s development and their productive potential in society. By using GIS, we can effectively target our most at-risk housing one house at time.”

So what's the goal of the project? "The overall goal of the project," states Neal Rosenblatt, project co-investigator, "is to target highest risk exposure areas and housing using GIS spatial analysis and prediction modeling toward strategy development for the purpose of eliminating lead poisoning as a childhood disease and public health problem by 2010."

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