The NAACP is not satisfied with researchers? claims that the sewage sludge compost used to lower lead levels in inner-city soil was safe.
The Baltimore City branch of the NAACP and the Black United Fund of Greater Maryland held a news conference Tuesday evening at Union Baptist Church on Druid Hill Avenue, demanding to know what other experiments the federal Housing and Urban Development Department has funded in the city in the past 10 years.
“Why do you even pick a place where there?s people?” asked Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, head of the city?s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Johns Hopkins University and its affiliate Kennedy Krieger Institute responded, saying they are “eager to discuss this study with anyone concerned.”
They issued a five-page statement and a copy of the study last weekend to try to prove that the sludge compost spread around nine poor, black families? homes in 2000 posed no health threat. The same sludge compost is spread at the Washington Redskins? FedEx Field, Camden Yards and the lawn at the White House, the statement said.
The sludge compost ? sewage treated to eliminate pathogens that is mixed with sawdust and wood chips ? was spread around nine East Baltimore homes to test whether it would reduce high lead levels in the soil.
The fertilizer is different from the Class B sewage sludge that is treated to reduce ? not eliminate ? pathogens and that has been blamed for illnesses.
“I think there?s an angry outcry because people don?t really understand what the study was all about,” said Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Dean Michael Klag.
But sewage sludge critic Caroline Snyder, professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, says researchers should have used a vacant lot instead of tilling lead-laden soil where the lead can get into the air and children can play.
Sen. Nathaniel McFadden, who represents East Baltimore, added: “As far as I know, when lead gets in the air, it?s harmful.”
Lead poisoning cases are down 95 percent since the study began, and the lead clinic at Krieger has all but closed, said Gary Goldstein, president of Krieger.
