INDIANAPOLIS — Concerns about health risks to children from toxic lead paint in old houses and on consumer products have prompted one legislator to try to change state law.    

A bill before the Legislature, the comprehensive Lead Poisoning Prevention Act, would affect working parents, landlords, paint dealers, child care centers, schools, testing laboratories and building contractors.

“People don’t know what all the hazards are,” the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Beverly Gard, R-Greenfield, said Thursday at a Statehouse news conference with state Attorney General Steve Carter and advocate Janet McCabe of Improving Kids’ Environment.

Lead poisoning can cause damage to the kidneys, nervous system and brain and, in young children, behavior and learning problems. About 1 percent of all children tested are found to have been poisoned, but state officials have said in some counties the percentages can reach 4 percent.

While recalls in recent months have raised concerns about toxic lead in imported toys, experts say the larger threat is lead-based paint in homes built before 1978. Indiana ranks 11th among states in its percentage of such homes. Older homes pose greater threats, Gard said, and Indiana has about a million homes built before 1950.

Gard’s bill would put the responsibility for eliminating the problem largely upon landlords. They would have to pay for lead paint inspections whenever a rental unit is sold, rented or identified in a permit for remodeling or rehabilitation. Landlords would have 90 days to fix any contamination.

Even without those changes, rented homes built before 1940 would need inspections by 2009; those built by 1950, by 2011; those built by 1960, by 2013; and those built before 1978, by 2015.

The bill also would require child care centers to have annual assessments of their lead risks and to require proof of a blood lead screening for children 9 months and older before enrollment.

McCabe said only 30 percent of the children most vulnerable to lead poisoning — those in low-income families — receive blood screens. Eighty percent or more of those found to have been poisoned received their high lead levels from ingesting lead in their homes or the soil outside, she said.

There currently is no law to prevent a landlord from renting out a home known to contain lead-based paint to families with young children.

Gard’s bill also would:

* Strengthen consumer protections by requiring retailers of paint products to post signs informing customers of lead hazards.

* Prohibit the sale, distribution or transfer of consumer products intended for children if the products contain lead.

* Develop a Lead Safe Work Practices program through the State Department of Health to train construction contractors on how to safely remove lead-based paint without spreading toxic dust.

* Establish a Lead Safe Housing Advisory Council, with representatives from housing, construction, insurance and baking to develop a program for housing-related lead poisoning.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2008/jan/04/bill-aims-to-change-indianas-lead-laws/