Lead Exposure From Water Supply in the Hudson Valley: Vox Research

By TONY CANTU (Patch Staff)

NEW CITY, NY - The ongoing scandal in Flint, Mich., where lead levels in the city water supply were discovered to be at alarmingly high levels has prompted anxiety nationwide about the safety of water supplies.

Prompted by that national worry, the news site Vox has plotted out lead exposure risk levels for every county in the nation.

"Neighborhoods where kids face the highest risk of lead poisoning exist all across America," the authors of the investigation conclude. "The trouble is that exposure risk is surprisingly difficult estimate, due to avariety of state-by-state differences in reporting standards."

For assistance in assessing the risk -- and painstakingly plotting out a U.S. map with varying degrees of lead exposure per county -- Vox researchers worked with epidemiologists in Washington state to estimate risk levels in every geographic area in America.

The areas of the resulting map where children are at greatest risk of lead exposure are scattered throughout the country, according to the Vox findings. The estimate on risk was calculated by using government data about each county's surroundings, researchers added.

In the map, the geographic areas shaded in bright red are the places public health researchers have identified as having the highest risk of lead exposure, Vox researchers point out. The vast majority of such red areas cluster in urban areas.

The research shows that in some of the country's oldest and largest urban aras -- places like New York or Chicago -- one in five census tracts have very high risks of lead exposure, the researchers found. Census tracts are defined as geographic areas that usually have between 1,200 and 8,000 people.

In younger metro areas (Los Angeles, for instance), risks are smaller but still present, Vox researchers found. In such areas, 12 percent of census tracts have risk scores of 10. And in four states including New York more than 20 percent of the census tracts have a lead exposure risk of 10, Vox researchers said.

The Hudson Valley follows the same pattern. The more urban areas -- Poughkeepsie, Mount Vernon -- have higher risk scores. Most of lower Westchester County -- older, thickly settled, shows orange to red on the map. Putnam County shows overall low levels.

The map resulting from the ambitious Vox research is interactive. To check the lead levels throughout the Hudson Valley and other parts of the country, click here.

To be sure, public health experts say no level of lead exposure is safe for children.

Patch Editor Lanning Taliaferro contributed to this report.