Posts By: LARC Staff

Chicago, Ill., July 11, 2016—Micheal Y. Newman-Brooks, a business manager and horticulturalist residing in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, is the newest board member of the Chicago-based Lead Abatement Resource Center (LARC), an organization devoted to combating environmental lead contamination. Micheal (pronounced “MISH-ell”) grew up in Chicago and attended the University St. Francis, in Fort… Read more »

Public health officials ordered UW-Madison to address chipping and peeling lead paint at an on-campus apartment complex this spring after they discovered a child living in one of the buildings had suffered lead poisoning. Read the full article

In the month since Chicago Public Schools started testing water in schools for toxic lead, results have shown elevated levels in more than two dozen buildings with hundreds of schools still to be tested. With a series of community meetings scheduled around the city this week to discuss the issue, the Tribune talked to a… Read more »

It’s 1957. Dr. Herbert Needleman is on his way to see a 3-year-old patient at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Needleman’s a young doctor, 6 feet tall with brown eyes and dark hair. This is the first case of lead poisoning he’s ever seen. And when he shows up, the girl is not in good… Read more »

The lessons of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, are both familiar and strange. An austerity-minded governor, Rick Snyder, using a controversial new law, appoints emergency managers for a number of the state’s poor municipalities, including Flint. By 2014, more than half of the black people in Michigan are living under unelected leaders with extraordinary… Read more »

BALTIMORE — The house where Freddie Gray’s life changed forever sits at the end of a long line of abandoned rowhouses in one of this city’s poorest neighborhoods. The interior of that North Carey Street house, cluttered with couches and potted plants, is lacquered in a fresh coat of paint that makes the living room… Read more »

Alarming levels of brain-damaging lead are poisoning more than a fifth of the children tested from some of the poorest parts of Chicago, even as the hazard has been largely eliminated in more prosperous neighborhoods, a Tribune investigation has found. Read the full article