The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has denied a request from Milwaukee\u2019s public health department for assistance in managing unsafe lead levels in the city\u2019s public schools, citing the loss of its lead experts in mass firings last week across federal health agencies. <\/p>\n
EpiAid is a CDC program providing a short-term loan of an officer from the public health agency\u2019s Epidemic Intelligence Service, or EIS. These \u201cdisease detectives\u201d are sent to state and local health departments to investigate urgent public health problems. <\/p>\n
Lead is toxic to the brain, and no levels of exposure are considered safe. It can be present in buildings constructed before 1978, when it was still legal to use lead in paint. <\/p>\n
On April 1 \u2013 the day about 10,000 federal health employees lost their jobs as part of a massive Reduction in Force across the US Department of Health and Human Services \u2013 Milwaukee officials received an email from a CDC epidemiologist telling them \u201cmy entire division was eliminated today,\u201d apologizing that she wouldn\u2019t be able to continue working with the city on the response and referring them to other points of contact within the agency. <\/p>\n
Two days later, asked about the cutting of the CDC\u2019s lead poisoning prevention and surveillance branch, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that the program might be reinstated. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some programs that were cut that are being reinstated, and I think that\u2019s one of them,\u201d he said April 3, noting that \u201cthere were a number of instances where \u2026 personnel that should not have been cut were cut.\u201d <\/p>\n
But that same evening, Milwaukee received the email from the CDC denying its EpiAid request. <\/p>\n
Milwaukee\u2019s health department, Reinwald said, \u201cremains committed to moving this work forward and finding solutions locally.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has denied a request from Milwaukee\u2019s public health department for assistance in managing unsafe lead levels in the city\u2019s public schools, citing the loss of its lead experts in mass firings last week across federal health agencies. EpiAid is a CDC program providing a short-term loan of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":406,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}