The Common Council’s plan to hand out lead test kits to residents is a “very dangerous idea” with the potential for “extremely hazardous” results, a lead poisoning prevention expert has warned a city legislative staffer by email.

The warning was not heeded and the email never circulated among other Council members. As a result, the Common Council moved ahead and bought at least 1,400 of the 3M LeadCheck swabs to hand out with informational pamphlets to residents.

Katrina Korfmacher, the associate professor for the Department of Environmental Medicine at University of Rochester Medical Center, wrote in the March 4 email that the test kits chosen by the Council are very accurate in a lab setting, but “can be quite misleading in homeowner application.”

“Overall, I think there is a strong national consensus in the lead public health community that distributing swabs as an outreach or community giveaway is a very dangerous idea unless done in close partnership with appropriately-educated health, housing or community staff to provide interpretation of the results,” Korfmacher wrote.

Ensuring that Buffalo residents have accurate information about lead poisoning is critical because the city is ground zero for lead poisoning in Upstate New York. Experts believe the chief culprit is chipping paint and lead paint dust inside and outside of Buffalo’s old housing stock. Neighborhoods on the city’s west and east sides accounted for three of the four ZIP codes in all of upstate reporting the most new cases, according to the state’s most-recent comparable data for a three-year period ending in 2012.

In 2015, 273 children in Buffalo tested for dangerous amounts of lead in their blood—a 13 percent increase from the prior year.

Frank Garland, legislative assistant to Masten District Council Member Ulysees Wingo, said he discussed the email with his boss. Wingo, however, said he did not recall the conversation.

“I don’t remember,” Wingo said. “It says it was [emailed] to Frank, so maybe he did.”

Korfmacher co-authored a study published in 2007 that found the swabs failed to detect lead dust hazards two-thirds of the time.

“Without strong support and education of each person using them, I believe the net result of handing these out to the public can be extremely hazardous,” Korfmacher wrote.

She further warned that residents who rely on the home test may misinterpret a reading that shows no presence of lead in a particular part of the house to mean the entire structure is safe. That could prompt a property owner to move forward with a home improvement project that could create a lead dust hazard.

“I am sure the city would not want to be liable — ethically or legally — for such a scenario,” Korfmacher wrote in her email.

Elizabeth McDade, program manager for Rochester’s Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning, agreed. She said the 3M test kits can give users a false sense of security.

“We always say ‘If you live in a house built before 1978, just assume point blank that there’s lead hazards and then work appropriately,’” she said.

“The Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning does not recommend the use of home testing kits.”

Even if the swab does produce a positive result for lead, the user still needs a solution or expertise on how to safely remediate the hazard, said Andrew McLellan, president of Environmental Education Associates and UNYSE.

“You don’t want to create hysteria and I think that may cause some people to panic a little bit,” said McLellan, whose companies provide training and lead testing.

“That’s only identifying the problem. We have to be able to provide solutions, too.”

The swabs are intended to provide an instant response for a user who is testing for the presence of lead in paint in a home. HybriVet Systems originally manufactured the kits until 3M purchased the company in 2011.

3M did not respond to inquiries about the accuracy of their test swabs from Investigative Post. The company’s website states the swabs are “EPA recognized on drywall and plaster” and provide “superior accuracy and sensitivity.” A representative of the former makers of the kits, Hybrivet Systems, told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle in 2007 that “we never developed the tests for dust.”

Wingo seemed unfazed by Korfmacher’s email.

“It is better to do something than nothing at all,” he said.

Niagara District Council Member David Rivera, after reading Korfmacher’s email for the first time, said. “It’s not that it doesn’t concern me. We are doing something. Is it 100 percent? Yeah, we’d like to do more.”

Few details of the testing initiative have been released. Council members and staff questioned did not know the plan for distributing the kits that in total cost almost $10,000. The Council last year reserved $65,000 for lead poisoning prevention.

Rivera said the testing kits were not the Council’s only response to the lead problem in Buffalo. He said Council also approved a contract to work with Environmental Education Associates.

McLellan, of the company, said he’s unsure of exactly what the city wants his company to do, but he has discussed providing technical expertise and conducting some lead testing.

“Sounds like they haven’t really got a plan yet,” he said.

The Erie County Department of Health has primary responsibility for testing residences for lead. County officials have said they don’t have sufficient resources to tackle the problem and have indicated they could use help from the city. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz has proposed the hiring of additional county inspectors and a nurse while acknowledging the move provides only a partial solution. His proposal faces an uncertain fate in the Erie County Legislature, whose Finance and Management Committee tabled the measure April 6.

Others have said the city and county could borrow from a program adopted by Rochester and Monroe County which has those two governments working together to inspect properties and otherwise deal with the issue.

Mayor Byron Brown, however, has been reluctant thus far to commit additional city resources and the Council has not pressed him on the issue.

Rivera, the Council’s majority leader, said further involvement from the city depends on the mayor.

“It just has to be a priority at some point and say, ‘Hey, we have a serious problem here,’ ” he said. 

Dan Telvock is a reporter for Investigative Post, a nonprofit investigative reporting center focused on issues of importance to Buffalo and Western New York. Its partners include The Public, WGRZ TV 2 On Yor Side, WBFO 88.7 FM, and The Capital Pressroom.