New from CodeWACK! Stealing our children’s potential: The failure of lead poisoning policy

This time on Code WACK! We talk a lot about how our healthcare system fails us when we get sick, but what about when regulators fail to PREVENT ILLNESS? Case in point: lead poisoning. It’s not just a danger from the past. Thousands of children are sickened from lead poisoning each year across the country. This week we’re looking at New York State which has older, poorly maintained housing stock in several areas, and where we’ve seen some of the highest incidences of lead poisoning in the country. So why hasn’t the state legislature passed the Lead Paint Right to Know Act, a bill that could help protect families from this entirely preventable harm? To learn more, we recently spoke with Shannon Burkett, a New York mother whose son Cooper was diagnosed with lead poisoning as an infant in 2008. Shannon is also the writer, producer, and editor of the podcast LEAD: How This Story Ends Is Up to Us. Both Shannon, a registered nurse, and Cooper, now 18, have been powerful voices in the fight to end lead poisoning. This is the second episode in a two-part series. Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more! And please keep Code WACK! on the air with a tax-deductible donation.