The relationship of neighborhood socioeconomic differences and racial residential segregation to childhood blood lead levels in Metropolitan Detroit

Lead poisoning in children in the United States remains a persistent and prevalent environmental threat, especially for children living in central city neighborhoods. These neighborhoods typically contain disproportionately minority children of low-income families, older housing stock with a declining population, and are racially segregated. Further, recent evidence finds no safe level of lead exposure without doing irreparable neurological/ neurobehavioral and physiological damage. Pediatric blood lead level data from the Michigan Department of Community Health and socioeconomic indicators from the U.S. Census were obtained for this study. Quantitative methods were used to determine if average blood lead levels of the children in the Detroit Metropolitan Area were related to composite socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhoods in which they live. In addition, this research estimated the effect racial residential segregation had on average blood lead levels in non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white children living in similar and different neighborhoods by socioeconomic characteristics. Results of bivariate regression analyses indicated that majority black neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic characteristics and high residential segregation from white neighborhoods were predictors of higher average blood lead levels of the children who lived there. Even more revealing, when black and white children resided in neighborhoods of similar socioeconomic characteristics, the black-white gap in blood lead levels disappeared. In a more in-depth difference of means investigation stratifying children by age and socioeconomic characteristics, children living in the same neighborhood with the lowest socioeconomic characteristics negated this gap but the same was not true when children lived in neighborhoods with high socioeconomic characteristics (except for children greater than six years old). Also, when black children resided in neighborhoods of the highest socioeconomic characteristics and white children resided in neighborhoods of the lowest socioeconomic characteristics, white children's mean blood lead levels were greater than those of black children. These results have implications for public health policy.