Does your family live in one of 8 Fresno areas where children test high for lead?
Fresno County is home to eight of the state’s 50 census tracts with the most children who test high for lead poisoning — and all but one of those are in the city of Fresno.
Seven of the tracts are in or near downtown Fresno, while a single tract in southern Selma also tested high for lead poisoning in children younger than 6, according to the state audit from California State Auditor Elaine Howle.
Despite those higher than normal rates, about half as many children in Fresno County covered by Medi-Cal have been tested than what is required by the state, according to the audit.
The report showed about 1.4 million children covered statewide by Medi-Cal have not received state-mandated testing for lead poisoning, even though the metal can cause behavioral disorders, loss of hearing, impaired physical development and death.
The California Department of Health Care Services “has not met its responsibility to ensure that children in Medi-Cal receive required tests at the ages of one and two years to determine whether they have elevated lead levels,” Howle stated in the report.
She said there has been lax oversight of whether health care plans are ensuring children are being tested for lead, but said the agency would implement an incentive program to encourage providers to do the testing.
“However, we are concerned by how long it may take these programs to influence lead testing rates,” Howle’s audit stated, noting other alternatives to increase testing.
Looking at state data from fiscal 2013-17, the audit identified 50 census tracts in California where the largest number of children who have elevated lead levels live. Eight of them were in Fresno County.
Medi-Cal mandates lead testing for children at ages 1 and 2. In those areas with high lead poisoning in Fresno County, just 51% of the children had been tested.
The children lived in these defined areas:
- Census tract 6: Most of the neighborhood in downtown Fresno, between Belmont and Ventura avenues, east of H Street and west of Q and Diana streets.
- Census 26.01: The area bordered by Belmont Avenue, First Street, Tulare Avenue and Cedar Avenue.
- Census Tract 24: Commonly called Hammond, the neighborhood is bordered on three sides by Belmont Avenue, First Street and McKinley Avenue. Its eastern border follows the BNSF railroad tracks and then juts across Hedges Avenue to Calaveras Street.
- Census tract 25.02: The area bordered by First Street and Olive, Belmont and Cedar avenues.
- Census tract 4: The area bordered by California and Orange avenues, as well as Ventura Avenue on two sides.
- Census tract 5.02: The neighborhood south of Belmont Avenue between Highway 41 and where Diana and Q streets meet.
- Census tract 20: A triangular area north of a street called San Joaquin Valley and pinched between Golden State Boulevard and Marks Avenue.
- Census tract 71: The Selma neighborhood is bordered by De Wolf and Mountain View avenues, as well as the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.
Other counties with multiple census tracts in the top 50 were Sacramento at nine; Los Angeles at seven; Humboldt and Imperial at four each; San Bernardino at three; and Orange, San Diego, Madera and Riverside at two each.
The auditor called upon the Public Health Department to immediately complete and publicize an analysis of high-risk areas around the state.
Rather than taking on the effort to identify and treat children, state public health leaders have contracted with local lead prevention programs to do the work but have not effectively documented whether these agencies are reducing lead exposure, according to the audit. The Department of Public Health also is using outdated information to allocate funding for these local agencies, leading to significant differences in the programs that can be offered.
Howle’s report called upon the Department of Public Health to update factors that health care provides use to determine whether children are at higher risk for lead poisoning. She also said the agency already should have sought legislation that would allow state Public Health to clear a backlog of unprocessed test results and ensure that lead tests could be matched with existing cases of lead poisoning.
“To support CDPH’s efforts to efficiently contact families and monitor lead test results, the Legislature should amend state law to require laboratories to report contact information and unique identifiers with children’s lead test results,” Howle recommended in the audit.
