National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week: October 20-26, 2019

NOTE: THIS IS AN ARCHIVED EVENT PAGE. FOR THE LATEST UPDATES ON NATIONAL LEAD POISONING PREVENTION WEEK, VISIT THE CURRENT PAGE HERE.

Join us during this year’s National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week as we raise awareness about lead poisoning.

National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (NLPPW) is October 20-26, 2019. NLPPW aims to help individuals, organizations, and state and local governments to work together to reduce childhood exposure to lead.

Our NLPPW2019 toolkit can help you to get the word out on social media. COMING SOON

#NLPPWchat

Mark your calendars! NCHH will host our third annual Twitter chat for National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week on Tuesday, October 22, 2019, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET (12:00 to 1:00 p.m. PT). All are invited to participate, but early registrants will receive the chat questions and other materials first. We’ll announce the theme shortly. Register for the Twitter chat here.

The #NLPPWchat aims to:

  • Discuss lead poisoning prevention and response
  • Raise awareness about the sources of lead exposure
  • Share helpful initiatives, policies, and resources

NOW AVAILABLE: Additional information, including chat questions and formatting information, is available here (the file downloads automatically).

If you missed any of our previous chats and would like to be notified about future social media events, contact Christopher Bloom.

Official NLPPW2019 Campaign Materials

NOW AVAILABLE: Use the following official agency materials to promote are National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week 2019 in your community:

Federal Agency Activities

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency collaborate with their partners every year on a national outreach effort to observe National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (NLPPW). The three key themes for 2020 are the following:

  • Get the Facts: Learn about the hazards of lead;
  • Get Your Home Tested: Learn how to minimize risks of lead exposure by hiring a certified professional to test older homes for lead; and
  • Get Your Child Tested: A simple blood test can detect lead. 

We’ll post the the agency event schedule once it’s announced.

NEW WEBINARS: This year, HUD, EPA, and CDC will post messages on social media corresponding to daily themes.

  • Monday, October 19, 2020: How Do You Know If There Is Lead in Your Home?
  • Tuesday, October 20, 2020: Make Sure Children Have Safe Crawls
    • 11 a.m. ET: Webinar – Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule (RRP) –
      “RRP projects are typically jobs performed at the option of the property owner for aesthetic or other reasons, or as interim controls to minimize lead hazards. Since RRP projects can disturb lead-based paint in homes and buildings built before 1978, thus creating new lead hazards, individual renovators must be Lead-Safe RRP trained and certified. This webinar will discuss the RRP rule and what firms and individuals must do to become Lead-Safe RRP trained and certified.” Register
    • 2 p.m. ET: Webinar – Primary Prevention Protects – Working with Residents to Get Their Homes Checked for Lead –
      “We will cover the benefits of encouraging residents to test a home and yard before issues with lead paint or lead dust happen. The webinar will also explain the difference between types of tests, such as paint inspections, risk assessments, and visual assessments, and which test is appropriate for different circumstances. We will touch upon the benefits and limitations of home lead paint testing kits.” Register
  • Wednesday, October 21, 2020: Speak to a Health Care Provider about Blood Lead Tests for Children
    • 11 a.m. ET: Webinar – Consumer Outreach Ideas for Lead Programs – “This webinar highlights the lead poisoning prevention activities of the Healthy Homes Partnership from states participating in the program. These creative activities can be used by organizations to increase their outreach and to communicate to various consumer types about important information on lead poisoning.” Register
    • 2 p.m. ET: Webinar – Amulets to Zaprana: Non-Paint Sources of Lead –
      “      In New York City (NYC), elevated blood lead levels in children and adults have been associated with the use of certain consumer products, including health remedies and supplements, foods and spices, cultural powders, and other non-food items purchased abroad or in NYC. This webinar will provide a background on the various identified lead sources and the cultural, ethnic, or religious traditions behind use of these products. The NYC Health Department’s comprehensive approach to identify and reduce exposure to lead in contaminated consumer products will also be discussed.” Register
    • 2 p.m. ET: Webinar – The Intersection of Environment, Housing, and Health, Part 1: Best Practices to Prevent Lead Poisoning: What Families Need to Know –
      “Despite the dramatic decline in blood lead levels since 1978, when lead paint was banned in the U.S., lead poisoning still persists today. Across the U.S., 24 million old homes have chipping and peeling lead-based paint, placing families at risk for lead poisoning. Lead exposure can cause irreversible damage to the brain and is especially harmful to children’s health and development. There are steps health care providers can take to keep families safe from lead.” Register | About This Webinar Series
  • Thursday, October 22, 2020: Learn More about Your Drinking Water
    • 2 p.m. ET: Webinar – HUD’s Lead Paint Safety Field Guide –
      “This webinar will focus on the new version of the publication, released by HUD OLHCHH in February 2019. We will cover purpose of the new guide, where to find it, and the range of potential users. Additionally, we describe how the publication was developed and importantly, what has changed in the guide. Finally, we review an example of information that could be looked up in the guide and demonstrate how to use it, wrap up reemphasize the benefit to target users.” Register
  • Friday, October 23, 2020: Lead Information in Other Languages

If you’re on Twitter, share messages sent from these social media accounts: @HUDgov, @HUDHealthyHomes, @EPA, and @CDCgov..

International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week of Action

The International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week of Action runs concurrently with awareness events in the United States. See the world, and check out resources related to this event.

Planning an Event? 
Share information about your event with others worldwide by registering your activity on the World Health Organization (WHO) website.

NCHH Webinar: Making an Impact!

NCHH and the National Safe and Healthy Housing Coalition have created a webinar entitled Lead Poisoning Prevention Week: Making an Impact! Watch the webinar to learn:

  • Clear actions and tools to plan a successful event
  • How to engage traditional media effectively
  • Simple steps to use social media to create buzz
  • How to engage and invite elected officials
  • Tools to easily include families impacted by lead and elevate their stories to increase understanding, awareness, and political will

Webinar resources:

  1. Planning Events
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes
  2. Effectively Engage Traditional Media
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes
  3. Building a Case for Elected Officials
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes
  4. Sharing Your Stories
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes
  5. Social Media
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes

Note that we may still be showing some links to resources from the 2018 Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. We’ll share updated links for 2019 as soon as they become available.

NLPPW Blog Archive

For National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week 2018, NCHH published a suite of guest blogs written by four of our 2017 Lead Poisoning Awareness Community Mini-Grant award recipients. These blogs are a great way to learn about what kinds of activities are possible for an organization with a smaller grant (in this case, $5,000) as well as pointers on how to create your own successful event.

As a special bonus, we also published a consumer guest blog, “When ‘Special’ Eguals ‘Sick,'” which illustrates why National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week is so important. Find it here.

10 Policies to Prevent and Respond to Childhood Lead Exposure

The Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, released a seminal report in 2017, 10 Policies to Prevent and Respond to Childhood Lead Exposure. The Health Impact Project is a national initiative designed to promote the use of health impact assessments (HIAs) as a decision-making tool for policymakers.

The 10 Policies report is an excellent resource to use during National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. Learn more about it here.

Resources

Additional Related Resources

While the following materials aren’t specific to National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week, they are popular materials that we’ve shared with many who were interested to learn how lead exposure affects them and their loved ones.