Good
morning and welcome to the Earl Ingram Show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.
I say five five seven five two forty eight forty two.
You can text us at that same number.
Good morning to you, brother.
How you doing,
Cardi?
Man, I am feeling good.
It's it's starting to rain a lot, man.
It's looking like a looking like an April shower type of March.
I don't know what's going
on.
Well, man, that's what you want.
You know, I
mean, I'm glad without the snow, but the rain is kind of a little depressing too at the same
time.
Well, listen, man, you know, what happens after, you know,
Life has been put to sleep during the winter.
It's got to be revived and it's revived by the rain.
Bring on the rain.
Because the rain means lush grass and all those kind of things.
I'm kind of a guy who always makes sure that my lawn is the best.
What's the guy, man, in the old...
in that Halloween movie.
And the guy says, stay off of my lawn.
Well, I'm not one of those kind of guys, but you know, but anyway, you know, I love the green grass.
But anyway, it's it's Wednesday and never cracker is the guy's name.
But anyway, speaking of Nebb and cracker, Paul Schwartz kind of reminds me of Nebb and cracker.
No, it doesn't.
Good morning and welcome to the Earl Ingram Show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.
It's Wednesday, that means Wednesdays.
With the get to let out guys, I'm happy to have them all back together.
Good morning to you, Paul Swartz, who is co-founder of Campaign for Lead Free Water.
Hey, Paul, are you worried about the rain?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, there's always something, but, but clearly we've had droughts for a long time to get a lot of rain in March is a good sign.
Amen.
All right.
Good to see you again.
Uh, Dr. Yana Lamborghini.
Good morning to you.
How are you doctor?
Good morning, Earl, very well.
So good to see you, good to be
here.
It's always great to have you guys together and the Dean of the Mall, my good friend Robert Miranda of Fresh Water for Life.
Good morning to you, Robert.
How you doing, man?
Good morning, Earl.
Sorry, I can't be with you on the on the monitor there, but hey, we're linked up on the phone.
Well, hey, man, that's, you know, that's that's it, man.
That's the most of it.
But I guess, you know, the the issue of what's happening in the city of Milwaukee, Milwaukee public schools is really, man, it's really just grown in its magnitude.
You say what, Robert?
Yes, it's really starting to take on a life of his own.
Yeah, it's getting the attention of the public.
And, uh, you know, just this past weekend, there was a very successful community assembly held by the, uh, uh, let's say, uh, let's say schools committee, uh, chaired by Dr. Payne.
And the committee actually drew a full house at the Washington Park Library with parents and members of the community.
And there was a great presentation.
Lots of information was passed, a thorough update to all the parents who attended and community members who attended on the
not only the beginnings of this whole thing and how it started, but where we currently are today and kudos to the work being done by the parents who are organizing this effort of combination of parents from Golda, Meir, and other schools that have been impacted by the lead issue are coming together.
They're reaching out to other schools.
to organize even more.
And they've come up with a few action items that they're gonna pursue.
And one of those is to call for the Milwaukee Public School Board to hold a special session on this topic because parents want to voice their concerns and rightly so.
Most community members who attended also.
are wanting to express concerns about the direction and how can we, how did we get to this point where we are even after we addressed this once already about 10 years ago.
And still here we are once again finding out that even though there were actions taken 10 years ago to
remedy the problem and try to resolve some of those issues, turns out that there was really no follow through to maintain the whole atmosphere of safe safety in the schools.
So there's still a lot of questions that need to be resolved.
Even though the Milwaukee Health Department has been transparent, and I can say that they have been, they are being as transparent as possible.
They have met a lot of the demands that were placed by parents on their petition.
Milwaukee public schools is really slow to respond.
The petition has about 11 demands that they put on MPS to answer some of their demands.
And so far, one demand halfway has been answered, all the others haven't, which is a real interesting matter because, you know, MPS is supposed to be really working with parents and addressing these issues because parents aren't trusting the school system to.
not only educate their children, but to keep their children safe.
And for NPS not to be responsive and coming forth with information for parents to disseminate among themselves is telling.
And it should be alarming to a lot of us in the community.
Well, you know, Paul, is this the way it's supposed to work?
And is this the...
the way that we're going to get the action.
We need grassroots efforts by parents organized.
I mean, it's one thing to have you guys behind the scenes doing things.
But what what really got them to move is parents organizing and mobilizing.
The people and people power have to get up a notch and hold those who are.
supposed to be doing the job accountable.
What we don't want to see as Robert Miranda described is a whack-a-mole situation where you think you have something done and then it just pops right back up sometime later.
You know, one thing to say as the parents struggle for these demands to be met by Milwaukee Public Schools is that there have been, and we should give them credit for this, filters.
and filter stations put out on a lot of the taps.
And although there's some recalibration that needs to happen, I think we've seen the data about lead and water, you know, some kitchen sinks and some other things that, you know, really need to be attended to.
It's really important to say what's working and what the parents and the community have gotten already.
and then to push them to do the rest of the job and to make sure that when our eyes are diverted that they're not having a party and not doing the work to maintain the progress that's been made and to address the other issues as well.
You know, you know Dr. Yana as you know Paul and Robert are saying and talking about and and yes the pressure is on the heat is on
in the responses.
I mean they shut down one of the schools which is certainly something I could have never dreamt that they would do but the pressure is mounting and building.
You say what?
I'd say that you know unfortunately we are in a situation where
for the vast majority of schools in our country, there are no regulations that ensure, at least for drinking water, that it is safe in relation to lead.
And so this is a bit of a regulatory loophole or black hole, if you will.
And we've got a decades-long history of problems discovered by parents.
or, you know, parents needing to be staying on top of these issues in order for them to be resolved and for solutions to be maintained, as Robert and Paul just talked about as well.
You know, the thing, the thought that comes to my mind, guys, is as this is, you know, bubbling to the surface, how many children
Were were poisoned over decades You know they this got out and and they've already you know that have been impacted by it's great that you catch it now But the fact that so many children have been damaged By this Any thoughts
yeah, I can jump in here just say really quickly that
you know, there's a long history of problems of lead in drinking water in schools.
And, you know, if you look at even in the early, I mean, you know, mid 1980s and then early 2000s, we have cases of, you know, Seattle, Washington DC, Montgomery County, Maryland, where
uh testing that was uh in in most cases pushed by parents showed uh the majority of schools having problems and also many schools having lead in water exceeding 700 parts per billion which is a ton of lead unaddressed.
855-752-4842 the get the lead out coalition is is on tap.
8-5-5-7-5-2-48-42 is the number, uh, you're tuned into The Earl Ingram
Show.
you
you
All right, welcome back to the Earl Ingram show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842, 855-752-4842, Texas at that same number.
Get the lead out coalition is in full force on the Earl Ingram show.
You know, you know, Robert was listening to Dr. Yana talking about how far back this damage actually goes.
You know,
These schools that they're focusing on, Robert and Paul and Dr. Yana, Milwaukee's not the only place that has school buildings that's 100 years old.
I'm sure all across this nation, and big cities, they kind of face the same kind of thing.
This really should be a national focus.
Not local.
I mean, shouldn't this be a major conversation at Congress and in the Senate?
Yeah, you would think it is and and it should be no doubt.
Um, you know, this weekend when we were doing the community assembly, one of the most shocking statistics that I received at the meeting.
came from a representative of the McKinnon Brown Sanctuary, I think you're familiar with.
Absolutely.
And one of the representatives there was giving a presentation on the lead blood testing program that they conduct there.
And she stated that out of the 380
children that they tested for lead blood levels 80% to 85%, I believe it was 85% of those children tested positive of 3.3 and above.
And the CDC has that threshold of 3.5 lead blood.
And 85% of those children that that agency tested out of 375 children were above that threshold.
And that was that to me was shocking.
Now, that's not to say that was all done by lead and water.
Of course, they were just testing from kids in the community, but
have that level.
of children percentage-wise testing positive for lead in their blood just is an indicator of this state of emergency that we here in Milwaukee should be sounding a five alarm bell on this issue because it's just devastating future generations of our community and the future of our communities that
this toxin is so out of control that our government and all our institutions have just decided to treat this as some kind of, I don't know, issue that really isn't of major concern.
And I say that because you see the priorities and their budgets.
their budgets are prioritizing skyscrapers and sports arenas and all kinds of Willy Wonka projects all over the cities.
And no one is really focusing on removing this toxin from our environment.
It's happening not only in Milwaukee, it's happening all over the country.
And so that was a statistic that really shocked me.
And I can imagine that if they did,
a district-wide testing of children in MPS schools.
I would not be shocked that the levels of blood in those students of lead and those students blood would be in high percentages as well.
It's just shocking to hear that.
You know, Paul, go
ahead, Paul.
Go ahead.
No, I just wanted to say that what Robert is revealing is the necessity to really flip the script and the narrative from finding lead in the blood to preventing lead getting in to our bodies and that prevention and public health and looking comprehensively at all the sources of lead, including water and
doing things like really educating people about where the sources are and how they can protect themselves in the water's case by using a duly certified filters with NSF 42 and 53 certification and a claim to reduce lead.
These are things we can do today that will end the exposure.
And if we cared about it, if we wanted to be efficient about money spent in the schools, we would do this preventive
type of work.
That's important so that we don't face another generation or more generations of harm, like the harm that was revealed at the assembly.
You know, and I know, Paul, you got to you got to run.
So we thank you as always.
But Robert and Dr. Yana, I want to ask you, you know, on the other side, maybe it's time once again to make people aware of the damage that this is doing to children.
Um, you know, we haven't talked about it in a while, but people really need to know the impact of what we're talking about.
855-752-4842 is the number.
Get the let out, uh, is on board this morning on the early show.
Paul, we'll see you soon.
All right.
Join us at 855-752-4842.
855-752-4842.
You can text us at that same number.
Once again, this is Get the Let Out with Dr. Yana Lambernidu of Coalition of
I can't think of it right now.
Dr. Lamani, the coalition for...
Campaign for Lead
Free Water.
Campaign for Lead Free Water.
I'm sorry.
And Robert Miranda of Flat.
And I asked before, you know, we took this short break.
I asked if you guys would talk about the impact of lead in children.
I think we haven't had that discussion or conversation in a while.
People may be listening for the first time and not even know or understand the impact of why you guys are fighting this scourge.
Yeah, Earl.
I mean, what a good question and it's so important to be reminding ourselves of this because.
We just, you know, oftentimes mentioned lead, everybody understands there's something bad about it, but really looking at specifically the adverse health effects with which it has been associated, it's kind of staggering, really.
Lead exposure is associated with miscarriage, with stillbirth, with premature birth, anemia, hyperactivity, attention deficit.
reduced capacity to learn, difficulty succeeding in school, juvenile delinquency, criminal behavior, and then for later adults, kidney damage, cardiovascular problems, reproductive problems, and really damage to every organ in the human body.
is has been shown to cause health harm even at low exposure levels, which is why there is no level of lead in blood that is considered safe.
It is why EPA has
defined the set the maximum contaminant level goal for lead in water.
This is the goal, health-based goal of zero.
Only zero lead in water is safe lead in water.
And some of lead's adverse health effects can be irreversible.
So the best way to avoid health harm from lead is to prevent exposures from all sources.
Robert.
Exactly.
And I echo what Dr. Yana has just stated.
I also want to highlight the falsehoods that are put out there, like what we heard last week from one of your callers.
Uh, who said, you know, that he has been drinking water from left pipes and, you know,
nothing's happened to him yet and it's family.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
He's, he's doing just fine and nothing's happened to him.
Well, you know, the, the misconception and the problem with people like that is they think that because people have been exposed to lead, there should be some kind of overt.
kind of indicator that their health is being impacted.
That they're supposed to show to the public that the lead has affected their mental state of mind, that there's supposed to be something that shows that they're supposed to be damaged by lead.
And again, this is the kind of mentality and thinking that uneducated really morons out there that think that just because they're not impacted by it or they don't see that kids are out there are completely acting in a totally mentally deranged state of mind.
This is the kind of
of nonsense that grows.
And it comes out of the fact that our government and institutions like the schools do not provide the kind of public education that is needed so people can have the information they need in order to understand the impact of lead in blood and how it affects our health, as Dr. Yana just stated.
Our children may not be showing those kinds of
over examples of physical harm, but they are hurting.
They are harmed.
And our schools are good indicators of the fact that they are being impacted.
Our streets are good indicator that they are being impacted.
You know, there are behaviors out there.
that people will tend to associate to bad parenting.
Well, you know, again, that behavior can be derived from the fact that a lot of our children have been devastated mentally by this toxin that is impacting their brain when they were consuming this and still consuming it through water, in my opinion.
Water is playing a big part in the damage of our children as they get older because they are ingesting more water.
They are eating food that is cooked with water that is laced with lead.
And it is an impact that affects us all in the community.
And so we don't have to see somebody
acting out in a way that some people like this guy think they should be acting out.
The problem is people who have conditions, as Dr. Yana just articulated, that could be a symbol or a symptom of the fact that their blood is laced with lead and they need to address it and take care of it immediately.
You know, Dr. Yana, just for information sake,
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Wisconsin has 176,000 lead pipelines, and they affect 111 distinct communities, especially Wisconsin's largest city, Milwaukee, which has 70,000.
Now, I think what people fail to understand and the impact of Donald Trump being a president,
as opposed to Joe Biden and what Joe Biden did.
The Cares Act and the American Rescue Plan Act, there was $2.53 billion that Evers, I mean, that Joe Biden basically put in, excuse me, over $9 billion that Joe Biden put
in place to address some of these issues, man.
That could just, Dr. Younger, that could just all disappear and go away.
Yeah, that's right, Earl.
That's a risk that we're facing right now.
I hope that it's not going to happen.
I hope that the funds under the Biden-Harris administration that were allocated
for lead service line replacement are going to be used in that way, even under this administration that we have at the moment.
As Robert said, and as it sounds like the caller from last week was suggesting, one of the reasons I believe that we have been so slow in addressing this very serious problem is precisely because lead is invisible.
and precisely because the harm that it wreaks is not visible either, not concrete.
People do not get physically sick unless they are exposed to extremely high levels of lead.
But when we're talking about the slightly lower levels, still high in many cases, but slightly lower levels and exposures on a routine basis, the effects are going to show in
you know, difficulty learning in school.
When somebody, a child has difficulty learning or has aggressive behavioral problems, it is rare that a conversation will happen about what types of lead and exposures this child had in the past.
When a pregnant person loses their fetus,
It is rare that there's going to be a discussion about what levels they've been exposed and whether lead actually contributed to the miscarriage or the stillbirth or the premature birth.
So there's a lot of questions that go unanswered.
And because of the invisibility of the problem, we have justified not dealing with it in an expedient and urgent fashion.
You know, Dr. Yana and Robert, when you, when we look at what is taking place and what is transpiring, wouldn't you think that automatically children who live, very young children who live in rural areas and in urban centers, should be tested for lead?
very young ages, you know, when they, when they see the doctors early on first couple of times, that this would be something that they would check on or is it too early for them to find that out.
I think you're exactly right, Earl, that blood lead testing is important and very early on is extremely important, especially
for exposures from drinking water precisely because many newborns are dependent on reconstituted formula that many times is made with tap water.
Sometimes parents even just draw hot tap water to reconstitute formula and hot tap water is at increased risk actually of containing lead.
from plumbing.
And unfortunately, our national approach to detecting children with elevated blood lead levels presumes that lead, pain, soil, and dust are the primary sources in every case.
This is a false and simplistic presumption.
And because of this presumption, the blood lead testing programs that we have developed and are used across the country.
begin testing children at around 12 months of age because that's the time when children begin crawling and they have more hand-to-mouth activity.
So the concern there is exposing themselves to lead dust that might be on the floor or lead paint chips.
And that's important.
That's very important.
But we are missing the whole entire first year where children might be exposed on a daily basis.
to low and high and astronomical levels of lead in drinking water.
All of that window closes.
And by the time we test children at 12 months or two years, exposures from lead in water that could have been catastrophic are impossible to identify through lead in blood testing.
You know, Robert, McCann and Brown's homeless sanctuary.
I've spent a lot of time there and I've watched those children come in and many of those children come in and be tested and you just could see when you look at them the kind of listlessness that you see in them and and sometimes if five six years old and so you know they've lived in places that you know aren't safe.
Let's talk about that a little bit more, Robert, with you, 8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2.
You're tuned into the Earl Ingram
Show.
While she lays her beam I stay out late at night and play my songs And sometimes all the nights can be so long And it's good when I finally make it home All alone
When she lays dreaming I try to get undressed without the light And quietly she says I was your knight And I come to her and say it was alright And I hold her tight
And she believes in
me.
I'll never know just what she sees.
All right, welcome back to The Earl England Show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.
855-752-4842.
Text us at that same number.
Get to let our coalition is on tap.
No pun intended.
Robert, you know, you see those children, man.
and every time I see a man, my heart breaks because the parents bring them there and the parents are renting places, right?
They're renting and, you know, all they can do is keep a roof over the child's head.
They don't really, they're not in a position to...
be concerned about those kinds of things, Robert.
There's so much of a struggle in this society for single mothers with children that they don't know.
Yeah, there's a lot of issues when we're dealing with families that live in poverty.
And on this matter, it's one of the most impactful as it goes to their health.
You know, I've dealt with a lot of families in Milwaukee.
I've talked with a lot of families and met with families whose children have been lead poison.
And one of the things that I always notice when I walk in the house or they invite me onto their porch and we talk and they tell me about the poisoning that happened to their child.
I look at the child and one of the things I noticed is what I.
see, and I call myself the urban stare.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and it's like, you know, you could tell that this child is suffering from this poison.
And, you know, it just one of those things where, you know, you
You appreciate the work that is being done by community organizations that do the blood lead testing.
And that's a good thing that they are doing it.
But there's also part of the lead blood testing that people have to understand.
And that is that, you know, the lead stays in your blood and it has about a 30 day threshold before it completely goes away from the blood.
So there's a chance that
when you get ready to go ahead and test the blood again, maybe in 60 days or so, you might not see it again in the blood.
So, you know, the idea here is that even though testing for blood levels is a good thing, testing if it's going to be done has to be done more consistent and you can't really catch it.
all the time if the lead leaves the blood after a 30 day threshold.
And so that's why it's very important to really push and focus on the issue of prevention.
We've got to find preventive remedies.
preventive measures that remove this toxin from the environment completely, remove it from the water systems completely.
And it's an easy thing to do.
It's not that difficult.
It can be done.
It just takes policy, it just takes elected officials with courage, it takes
uh, people who, uh, uh, care to put the money into it and remove these toxins, uh, from the environment and invest in the infrastructure infrastructure.
So, so, so Robert,
the president last night, so when people say we don't have the money, he's talking about building an iron dome over the entire United States.
Can you imagine the amount of money?
You know, yeah, it's just a crazy thought and for a fraction of that you can And for a fraction of that you can prevent children from being led poison, right?
You know, I mean the goofiness of some of the stuff this guy talks about you know and and and talk about you know, we want to cut Funding but yet we want to send people to Mars
You know We want to and we want to populate Mars.
You know, I mean first let's take care of earth You know, let's do let's do the things that yes to do in order to to deal with the seven billion people on earth the three hundred and forty million people in the United States the six million people in Wisconsin and and and not worry about putting one million people on Mars now how much money that's going to be
used to do that.
It's crazy.
That the half of that money can be done to clean this mess up in the United States.
Hey, Robert and Dr. Yanna.
Thank you guys as always.
Hey, Robert, I got to talk to you later on today.
So I'll call you after the show.
All right.
Thank you.
Dr. Yanna.
Thank
you.
Thank
you as
well.
We'll talk next.
Okay.
Up next
up next.
Dr. Robert Craig, Executive Director of Citizen Action.
We're going to be talking about Donald Trump and his speech last night.
I don't even know if you call it a speech.
But anyway, 855-752-4842.
Up next, Dr. Robert Craig, Executive Director of Citizen Action and
you.
Then I'm too