Leadville – Last year, Vicki Orton took blood from 376 kids, looking for elevated lead levels.
She found one.
“That child came from somewhere out of state,” said Orton, the public-health nurse in charge of Lake County’s blood- lead program.
When Leadville landed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list in the 1980s, concerns over potential lead poisoning led to the creation of the Kids First program, where children 6 and under are entitled to free screenings each year.
The fear was that exposure to water from aged lead pipes, chips of lead-based paint in homes, and the dirt in backyards could raise lead levels to the point that children would develop learning disabilities.
A 1991 study found that 8 percent of Leadville’s children had elevated lead levels, but today they match the national average, 2 percent.
So does Leadville have a health problem?
“I don’t know,” Orton said. “There are places in Denver that have higher levels of lead.”
Although some Leadville youth show elevated levels of lead in their blood, many local officials believe the problem has been overstated by the EPA.
Orton believes most of the problems she sees come from candies produced in Mexico, popular among the Mexican immigrant population.
