Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch announced on June 30, 2005 that the DuPont Corporation has agreed to pay nearly $12 million to settle its case in the state’s landmark lawsuit against the manufacturers of lead-based paints. This is a significant acknowledgment by a lead paint manufacturer of its responsibility to address the problem it partly caused.

Under the agreement, DuPont will pay for education, training, community, outreach, enforcement, and lead-hazard research. $6.6 million of the agreement is to be used to abate lead hazards in 600 houses. This is a small step forward in addressing lead hazards in Rhode Island. According to data from the 2000 Census combined with HUD’s National Survey of Lead and Allergens, Rhode Island has 350,000 housing units built prior to 1978, of which more than 150,000 have lead hazards.

Rhode Island filed suit against the lead pigment manufacturers in October 1999 to recover resources needed to advance lead poisoning prevention. The state requested the court to order the defendants to detect and abate lead hazards in the state’s public and private buildings, and to support other measures to redress the cost to the taxpayers of childhood lead poisoning. Rhode Island is continuing to press its case against the six remaining defendants: Atlantic Richfield Co., Sherwin-Williams Co., Millennium, NL Industries, American Cyanamid, and SCM/Glidden. The trial is scheduled for this September.

This settlement agreement comes as encouraging news to other cities and states working to engage the lead industry in paying it’s fair share of the cost of protecting children at highest risk for lead poisoning. In addition to Rhode Island, the counties of Santa Clara, Alameda, Kern, Solano, and Santa Cruz, CA; and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, Milwaukee, and St. Louis all have suits pending against the lead pigment manufacturers.

For decades, the lead industry aggressively promoted lead-based paint as safe for use in houses, apartments, schools, hospitals, and nurseries, claiming that lead-based paint promoted health and sanitation. Although the industry internally acknowledged the hazards of lead-based paint early in the 1900s, it concealed them from the public. Efforts to hold the industry accountable have the potential to generate urgently needed resources to eliminate lead hazards putting children at risk in older housing.