The leading poisoning prevention program of the federal government is not operating, despite the statements of the Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that is being financed.
The 26 program employees were placed on administrative license in April, with terminations established for June 2, as part of a broader restructuring of federal agencies within the HHS.
To date, none of the employees have been restored, with layoffs in force in less than two weeks, said Erik Svendsen, director of the Division of Sciences and Environmental Health Practices, an department within the centers for the control and prevention of diseases that the main children’s program includes.
Kennedy had faced criticism in the last weeks of the Democratic Senators for the dethered of the program, which helped state and local health departments with blood lead tests and surveillance.
At a hearing before the Senate Assignments Committee on Tuesday, Kennedy told Senator Jack Reed, Dr.i., that the program was still being financed. The previous week, Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis, told Senator, who had no plans to eliminate it.
But Svendsen said that all his division was dissolved by HHS and that it cannot be easily replaced.
“There are no other experts who do what we do,” he said. “You can’t simply press a button and get new people because our public health areas are very specialized.”
The employees of the Children’s lead program have not received a address on how to transition from their work, according to two CDC scientists familiar with the matter.
Even low levels of exposure to lead could put children at risk of development delays, learning difficulties and behavioral problems. The CDC program offered technical experience to help resource health departments to prevent those results. In 2023, he helped solve an plus poisoning outbreak throughout the country linked to the apple canyon. And it was in frequent contact with the Milwaukee Health Department this year after the city discovered dangerous lead levels in some public schools.
Kennedy told Reed on Tuesday that “we have a team in Milwaukee” that offers laboratory support and analysis to the health department.
But Milwaukee’s Department of Health said that Kennedy’s statement was inaccurate and that the city had not received any federal epidemiological or analytical support related to the main crisis.
“Unfortunately, in this case, that is another example in which the secretary does not have his straight facts,” said Mike Totoraitis, city health commissioner.
Caroline Reinwald, spokesman for the Milwaukee Health Department, said that the only recent participation of the federal government in the main crisis was “a short visit of two weeks of a single member of the CDC staff this month, which helped with the validation of a new instrument in our laboratory.”
“This support was requested independently of the [Milwaukee Public Schools] Crisis and was part of a separate and pre -existing need to expand the long -term capacity of our laboratory for lead tests, ”Reinwald said in a statement.
The Department of Health and Human Services has said that efforts will continue to eliminate children’s lead poisoning through a newly created department called administration for healthy America. But Democratic legislators and environmental health groups question how work can continue without restoring staff.
“Despite what you told me last week, you have no intention of eliminating this program, he fired the entire office responsible for carrying it out,” Baldwin told Kennedy at the audience on Tuesday. “Your decision to fire staff and eliminate offices is to endanger children, including thousands of children in Milwaukee.”
The HHS did not respond to a request for comments.
Kennedy did not offer new details about his agency’s restructuring plan at the hearing, citing a court order that forced the Trump administration to stop efforts to reduce the size of the federal government.
Milwaukee’s main crisis became clear for health officials in February, when the city’s department of health identified dangerous levels of toxin in school classrooms, corridors and common areas, due to lead dust and the deterioration of lead -based paint.
Before the Childhood Lead program is destroyed, the CDCs had met with the Milwaukee Health Department weekly to create a plan to evaluate tens of thousands of students for lead poisoning, Totoraitis said.
The City Health Department asked the CDC on March 26 to send the staff to help, Totoraitis said, but the agency fired its main childhood team on April 1 and denied Milwaukee’s request two days later.
“This is the first time in at least 75 years that CDCs have denied an AID request, so it is a fairly historical moment,” he said, referring to a request for CDC to investigate an urgent public health problem.
To date, the Milwaukee Health Department has identified more than 100 schools built before 1978, when the Federal Government prohibited the use of the consumer of lead -based paintings. Around 40 of them have been inspected, Totoraitis said. Six schools have closed since the beginning of the year due to lead pollution, and only two have reopened.
Around 350 students in Milwaukee have been examined by leading leading of 44,000 identified as they have a potential risk, Totoraitis said. The city has confirmed a case linked to exposure to lead at school, and two more linked to exhibitions both in school and at home. The Health Department said it is investigating four additional cases, which can involve multiple sources of exposure.
Totoraitis said the department is used to looking for lead in houses and rental units, but CDCs would help them to climb that operation to inspect larger buildings. CDC employees were also supposed to help establish lead detection clinics and investigate where children had been exposed, he said.
While the Department of Health is handling those efforts on its own, Totoraitis said it may not have the ability to evaluate everyone in a timely manner. He estimated that the department could handle around 1,000 to 1,200 cases of children’s lead poisoning a year. This includes testing the blood lead levels of children, treating lead poisoning with quelation therapy (which eliminates heavy metals from the bloodstream) and eliminating home exhibitions replacing windows and doors.
Totoraitis said he hopes to hire two of the CDC employees finished for at least a couple of weeks to help address persistent questions about how to administer the crisis.
Better yet, he said: “I’m still waiting to receive an email saying: ‘Hey, we recover our jobs'”.
