Embedded, and then Embodied: Urban Decline and the Social Costs of Lead Poisoning Exposure

• In Event: Spatial Distribution of Environmental Harms

Abstract

How does lead poisoning exacerbate racial inequalities in cities? Lead poisoning plays an understudied role in issues facing Black and Brown communities: minorities face exposure to environmental dangers at greater rates than Whites due to environmental harms caused by state abandonment. This social problem compounds markers of urban inequality such racial segregation, employment scarcity, and low education. Pathways to lead exposure include contact with dust, paint, soil and water found in the areas children often play in older homes. While practitioners have understood the physiological consequences of lead exposure in children (permanent learning disabilities), researchers have yet to understand the downstream effects lead exposure imposes on low-income families in dilapidated housing caused by years of neglect. Findings indicate the consequences of lead exposure compound pre-existing hardships for low-income tenants (occupational strain, housing stress) and create new ones (caring for permanently ill children, frustration navigating healthcare, landlord/tenant conflicts). This research explores the ramifications of lead poisoning to understand how it creates racialized environmental injustice that impedes family well-being via the imposition of multiple social costs. Lead poisoning has become the toxic legacy of disinvestment, but the lived experience within leaded landscapes remains an uncharted component of research on impoverished communities.

Author

• Matthew H. McLeskey, Oswego State College, SUNY