CLEVELAND — Silent, but devastating. That's how University Hospitals pediatrician Dr. Dieter Sumerauer sums up the consequences of lead poisoning.
"Lead is actually quite silent," Sumerauer said. "These lowest levels of lead exposure — which lead to the largest decreases in IQ — actually are kind of symptom free in children, and that's what makes them so devastating."
Now, the city of Cleveland has multiple departments working together to make it harder to sell a house with known lead issues.
"These affidavits of fact ensure that, for the first time in our city's history, properties under a lead hazard control order cannot be sold without the explicit knowledge that they are uninhabitable until the lead is properly abated," Mayor Justin Bibb said during his State of the City Address Wednesday evening.
Lead paint was common into the 1980s, so it can be common in older homes.
"Two-thirds of housing in Ohio was built in the lead paint era," Sumerauer told 3News, "and we aren't just talking about lead paint chips; we're talking about dust that accumulates."
That's why making sure people have knowledge of lead hazards when purchasing or renting a house is so important. Bibb anticipates this as just a "first step" in cracking down on nuisance violations in Cleveland.
"Urban areas, in particular, are the hardest hit," Sumerauer said. "So, inner city Cleveland and so some of our oldest inner-ring suburbs are the hardest hit with lead paint."
A problem years in the making, that will take years to fix.