Lead-Safe Toolkit for Center-Based Child Care
Lead in Soil
COVID-19: For comprehensive guidance on cleaning, disinfecting, screening, social distancing and other COVID-19 best practices within child care environments, consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. NCHH has also curated a page of resources to assist with the challenges created by COVID-19, including some that may be useful to center-based child care providers, as well as the Healthy Homes Guide to Cleaning and Disinfection, which provides guidance specific to cleaning and disinfecting safely. Visit the Homes and Facilities pages for guidance relevant to home-based and center-based child care settings. Also make sure to consult your state and local reopening guidelines.
Lead is often found in soil because of the historic use of lead-based paint and leaded gasoline for cars, the current use of leaded gas by small airplanes, and industries that put lead into the air. Your soil could be lead-contaminated if your child care facility is near a current or former industrial area, next to a busy highway or high-traffic road, or if it was built before 1978 (lead paint was used on homes and businesses until it was banned in 1978). Children can ingest or inhale contaminated soil particles, some too small to see. There is NO safe level of lead in a child’s blood. Even very low levels can cause brain damage, lowered IQ, and behavior problems.
Below is a lead-in-soil policy you can adopt for your business, along with a worksheet to help you, step by step, as you set this policy into action. Scroll through the images below to view and download each lead-in-soil resource in the Lead-Safe Toolkit for Center-Based Child Care.
Webinar: Lead in Soil
The third session in our four-part webinar series describes policies and methods for protecting the children entrusted to your care from lead hazards found in soil. The videos in this series run approximately 30 minutes and may be watched in any order. [url; 2020]
Lead in Soil Policy for Homes Built Prior to 1978
Lead in Soil Policy for Homes Built After 1978
About the Project
With funding from the JPB Foundation, Eco-Healthy Child Care® (a national program of the Children’s Environmental Health Network), the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), and the National Center for Healthy Housing have partnered to help family child care providers eliminate lead in their home environments by developing the Lead-Safe Toolkit for Home-Based Child Care and the Lead-Safe Toolkit for Center-Based Child Care.
The Lead-Safe Toolkit for Center-Based Child Care is a work in progress, so additional resources will be added periodically. We’ll also conduct webinars to acquaint providers with the toolkit, provide technical assistance to answer provider questions about how best to adopt lead prevention policies, and post testimonies from home- and center-based child care providers, sharing their experiences as they work to protect the children in their care and their own families from lead hazards.
Additional Resources
You may also want to visit these directories within the Lead-Safe Toolkit for Center-Based Child Care: