By Leigh Jones
The Daily News

Published February 20, 2008

GALVESTON — The Galveston County Health District will not release the names of 12 property owners mentioned in a recent study of the island’s lead contamination levels, unless the Texas Attorney General says it must. 

The Daily News requested the names of the owners and the addresses of their properties under the Texas Open Records Act. 

But Myrna Reingold, with the county’s legal department, said on Tuesday she thinks the county was prohibited by state and federal law from releasing the information because of patient confidentiality requirements. 

“The issue is not about land owners,” she said. “The issue is about giving out the addresses of people who’ve undergone blood lead level testing.” 

Section 88.002(b) of the Texas Health and Safety Code, cited by Reingold as justification for withholding the information, states that reports, records and information relating to cases or suspected cases of childhood lead poisoning and children with blood lead levels of concern are not public information under the open records law and may not be released or made public. 

Reingold said both the Medical Practice Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act might also prevent the health department from releasing the information.

Questions about the identity of the property owners were raised after Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine released its lead contamination study last year. Galveston’s lead poisoning cases are six times higher than the state average. 

While analyzing the properties most likely to be contaminated, based on where children with elevated blood lead levels lived, researchers discovered 20 percent of the buildings belonged to just 12 property owners. 

Other cities, like Boston, have released lists of contaminated properties as a way to force owners to clean them up. 

Baylor researchers, who obtained information about cases of lead poisoning from the local health department, turned over the results of their work to local officials late last month. 

The study paired medical data with property information from the Galveston Central Appraisal District in an attempt to predict where contaminated properties not already identified as such might be located. 

The resulting map shows a hot spot of likely contamination between 25th and 48th streets, both north and south of Broadway. 

Two-thirds of Galveston’s housing stock was built before 1978, when the federal government banned lead in residential paint.

www.galvnews.com

For More Information Contact:
Kurt Koopmann
Public Information Officer
Galveston County Health District
409-938-2211 or 409-392-0007
kkoopman@gchd.org