Inspired in part by the recent tobacco industry settlement, Santa Clara County in California has become the first county in the U.S. to sue the lead paint industry for medical and other costs associated with lead poisoning due to exposure to deteriorated lead paint in homes. The lawsuit seeks unspecified money damages from eight manufacturers and a trade association.

The county contends that lead paint is a defective product about which the manufacturers failed to properly warn the public. The lawsuit also claims that the industry has misrepresented and concealed the health hazards of exposure to lead, and fought government regulation of its product.

The lead paint industry denies trying to hide knowledge of the hazards associated with lead-based paint. Industry representatives state that they have voluntarily worked to protect the public's health and supported programs, including those in Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont, which have significantly reduced the incidence of child lead poisoning. Federal regulations have barred the sale of lead paint for interior use since 1978.

Three other California counties are expected to join the lawsuit. The state of Rhode Island and a number of U.S. cities and school districts have also filed similar suits. As in the lawsuits which resulted in the recent landmark tobacco industry settlement, these suits target the manufacturers of an allegedly harmful product to recover costs that the government has incurred for health care bills associated with its use. In the past, legal action aimed at fighting lead-paint contamination has focused primarily on landlords whose failure to properly maintain their properties caused chipping and flaking of lead paint.

Why now?According to Eileen Quinn of the Alliance to Prevent Childhood Lead Poisoning, such lawsuits may be an effective way to fill the gaps in the resources required to address the problem of childhood lead poisoning. Santa Clara, for example, would use funds from the lawsuit to carry out lead-paint removal and mitigation in affected buildings, something that the county says it cannot afford to do on its own. "These suits are saying that taxpayers are not responsible to clean up hazards that the industry should never have allowed to be in place," Quinn says.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that although childhood lead poisoning has declined dramatically in the United States over the last 20 years, it is still an important health problem, affecting an estimated 890,000 preschoolers. About 4.4 percent of children ages 1 to 5 have too much lead in their bodies

"People tend to think we've finished the job," Quinn says. "We've made tremendous progress in the United States over the last 20 years." But there are still cities around the country, including New York, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, where higher percentages of children have elevated levels of lead in their blood. In Santa Clara County, about 5,900 have lead poisoning. Of the 740 cases that have been identified since 1992, 87 percent were children under the age of six, and 84 percent were Hispanics.

Very severe lead poisoning in children can cause coma, convulsions and even death. Lower levels of lead in the blood can have adverse affects on the central nervous system and kidneys. Even low levels of lead contamination can result in children having decreased intelligence and behavioral problems. According to the lawsuit, the county spends between $1,300 to $5,000 on medical costs per child with elevated blood-lead levels, and about $3,300 per child for special education services related to the effects of lead.

Who's to blame?Alan Wheat, a spokesperson for some of the companies targeted by the lawsuit, says that the industry sponsored some of the original studies on lead toxicity and worked to promote a standard of reducing the concentration of lead in paint to 1 percent. "This industry has a history of being responsible in regard to dissemination of information on the dangers of lead," Wheat says.

But advocates claim that the companies have known for over a hundred years about the dangers of lead paint, yet did little about it until government regulations forced them to stop marketing it in the 1970s. The lawsuit cites advertising campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s that touted the advantages of lead paint for nurseries, children's rooms, hospitals and schools. They also argue that paint makers underplayed the dangers in an effort to calm public concerns about lead paint, which was known to be a major source of childhood lead poisoning.

The lead paint industry, however, points out that lead-based paint has not been marketed for interior residential use for almost forty years, even though federal regulations banning lead as an ingredient in interior paint didn't take effect until 1978. Paint makers also argue that one critical difference between tobacco and lead paint is that, when used and maintained properly, lead pigment in paint is not harmful. It is when children ingest or inhale particles of lead-based paint that their blood lead levels can rise dangerously high. The industry claims that the neglect and poor maintenance of older homes is what creates these dangerous conditions for children.

Although lead paint lawsuits have been brought against landlords and building management companies for many years, the Santa Clara county case is among a new crop of lawsuits that implicate the manufacturers themselves. "Nobody wants to take legal action," Quinn says, "but since the industry has fought regulatory and legislative solutions, their track record demonstrates that legal action is necessary."

• For more information, visit the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning [1].