Residents shocked and concerned by elevated lead hazards in South Bend neighborhoods
June 27, 2025
SOUTH BEND — Curtis Cathey was immediately concerned after learning about the risk of elevated lead levels in his neighborhood full of older homes. As he attended the Miami Village Neighborhood Summer Kickoff with his two sons, 11-year-old Aasim and 6-year-old Ameer, he became determined to know the hazards his home might potentially pose to his family.
Aasim and Ameer regularly play outside, and Cathey used to grow cucumbers.
“I didn’t know it was a big deal,” Cathey said. “I’m going to go home to get some dirt and get it tested.”
Ornella Joseph and Vikrant Jandev, graduate students with the Notre Dame Lead Innovation Team, provided lead testing at the summer kickoff at Randolph Park on June 1.
“People will bring their soil samples and we will test it on site and tell them what the levels are so they can take remedial action,” said Joseph, who works at a lab under Notre Dame Professor Marya Lieberman.
Joseph explained that remedial action could include covering the soil with grass so children can’t play in it or planting flowers instead of vegetables “so that you’re not exposing yourself.”
Lead, a neurotoxin, can cause devastating life-long health complications, including brain and nerve damage, said the St. Joseph County Department of Health. No amount of lead is safe, they said, but children under 7 are most at risk of learning and behavior problems, including developmental disabilities. Pregnant women can transfer lead to their unborn child.
Lead exposure occurs as lead paint deteriorates and falls within reach. If children don’t wash their hands properly after playing, they can ingest lead from their fingernails, allowing lead to enter the bloodstream. Lead can also enter the body by eating produce grown in soil with high contents of lead. Additionally, paint dust within homes can appear on floors or window sills, affecting anyone who touches and ingests it.
The St. Joseph County Department of Health reported that South Bend has a higher concentration of lead in its soil than Flint, Mich., had in its water back in 2014. Additionally, the health department cites a 2016 Reuters report listing South Bend with six times as many children identified with elevated lead levels in their blood than in Flint.
In Joseph's three years of providing lead testing kits, she said, more people are becoming aware of lead quantities in their community. More lead kits are being returned for testing.
She said 77% of the lead screening kits the team analyzes are found to have one or more lead hazards.
A lead testing kit consists of individual plastic bags where people can place their samples. The first bag is for soil around the side of the home, known as the “drip zone,” which can have high levels of lead where paint dust or paint chips have fallen. The second bag is for soil in a play area, if residents have one, and the third is for soil in the street. Joseph said that recently she hasn’t seen very many elevated lead levels from the streets.
Joseph gave Cathey a lead kit. He walked home and returned with soil and paint samples. Joseph placed a bag of soil over a portable X-Ray Fluorescence analyzer that can read lead levels in 30 seconds.
Cathey’s soil had a reading of 238 parts per million, which is higher than the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s recently lowered hazard threshold of 200 parts per million. The hazardous level was previously 400 parts per million for soil.
“So, this is high?” Cathey asked Joseph after seeing the reading.
“It’s higher than the current hazard level,” Joseph responded.
“Is it a bad high?” asked Cathey as he looked at the reading again.
“It’s dangerous if the child is eating it and if it’s tracking into your house,” Joseph said. “It’s better to leave your shoes at the entrance so you don’t track the soil inside.”
Cathey’s home was built in 1918, within the timeframe lead paint was used in homes. He said he had painted over some rooms, but brought a sample from a room that hadn’t been painted over.
Joseph began testing the paint sample Cathey brought back. The paint test came back negative for lead.
Lead community health workers from the Department of Health wrote down Cathey’s address and contact information to schedule a time to get Cathey’s house and his son Ameer's blood tested for elevated levels of lead.
South Bend hot spots for child lead exposure
Debbie Applegate was shocked after meeting Heidi Beidinger, the co-founder of a local community coalition, Lead Affinity Group, and learning about the high lead levels in Miami Village.
Beidinger, who’s conducted community-based research with a focus on lead poisoning prevention since 2017, regularly strives to educate the community about the amounts of lead in the city and how to fix it.
“We all need to become aware,” Beidinger said. “We all need to know how to live lead-safe.”
Beidinger said kids are often exposed to lead at 1 to 2 years old, around the age they start crawling. They get access to dust on the floor, furniture and window troughs, which can contain lead and can be dangerous if ingested.
“Kids chronically exposed to lead for long periods of time have significant damage that lasts a lifetime,” Beidinger said.
Miami Village, stretching from Ironwood Road to Miami Street and from Lincoln Way West to Ewing Avenue, is one of nine South Bend areas, according to 2005-2015 lead screening data Beidinger derived from St. Joseph County lead database, where 20 to 30% of children who were tested have confirmed elevated blood lead levels.
Indiana Department of Health census data shows that St. Joseph County's census tract 30, located in the Miami Village Neighborhood, has over 71% of homes built before 1940 and nearly 41% of children under 6 years old living in poverty. Beidinger said many children do not get tested.
Census tracts four, located in the LaSalle Area neighborhood, five, within Lincoln Manor, Kennedy Park and North West neighborhoods, seven, located in the Chapin Park Historic District in the Near Northwest, 21 in the LaSalle Area neighborhood, and census tracts 22 and 27, within the city's westside, also had 20 to 30% of children under 5 years old tested found with elevated blood lead levels.
Census tracts six, located in the Near Northwest neighborhood, and 19, in the Kennedy Park neighborhood, are considered “hot spots”, with over 30% of children tested, under the age of 5, having an elevated blood lead level.
Beidinger shared in her Dec. 2018 publication "Inconsistent screening for lead endangers vulnerable children: policy lessons from South Bend and Saint Joseph County, Indiana, USA" that "census tract 19 appears to have the lowest testing rate, with an average of 5.5% over the 7-year period. Testing in census tract 27 has been inconsistent, with rates ranging between 9.9 and 67.2%. Census tract 6 requires special attention; this area has one of the lowest lead testing rates (7.3%) yet contains the highest proportion of children with EBLLs (36.4%)."
“It’s shocking that in this day and age, we haven’t taken more proactive measures to correct that,” said Applegate, president of the Miami Village Neighborhood Association. “But it’s not shocking because we are probably 97% percent residential and the average age of the houses built here are between 1910 and 1945.”
With older homes concentrated in a low-income neighborhood, Applegate said, residents don’t have resources to mitigate the lead amounts and they might not understand that there’s help available.
In contrast with Flint, Mich., St. Joseph County’s main lead risk lies in the dust from the paint, said Briannah McCall, the leading lead risk assessor with the county health department.
“Any property built before 1978 is at risk for having lead in the paint because they were still using it when it was built,” McCall said. Lead paint was used because it lasts longer, but was banned in the United States in 1978 because of the health hazards it poses.
St. Joseph County, an older community, has older housing stock, McCall said.
Based on when homes were built, McCall said, “It’s predicted that 70% of the homes in the county have lead and 80% of the homes in South Bend have lead in them.”
Lead in soil is naturally occurring, McCall said.
“It’s higher because we have neighborhoods where the houses are closely put together,” McCall said. “When they were constructed, it leached into all of that soil.”
Applegate started gathering people to build awareness of this issue and thought the Miami Village neighborhood’s summer kickoff would be the perfect event to provide resources to the community.
“We want to make sure that anybody, especially our children, are safe,” Applegate said.
Pursuing testing and next steps
Jonathan Carmona, a lead community health worker with St. Joseph County, regularly visits homes, schools, daycares and libraries to provide testing, educate parents and guardians about lead dangers and to emphasize the importance of repeat testing. He receives cases from the Indiana State Department of Health that have children identified as having elevated blood lead levels.
To ensure uniformity in testing, in accordance with House Enrolled Act 1313, the IDOH provided standards for health providers. All medical providers need to administer lead tests on children between 9 and 13 months old and then again at 21 and 27 months old. If a child between 28 and 72 months old does not have record of a blood lead test, they must have one performed as soon as possible. Children must be tested at 6 years old and younger.
Carmona said the amount of child lead testing has increased since the department's proactive outreach measures. Areas he frequently visits include: Mishawaka (between Fourth Street and 12th Street), Miami Village, the historical homes in the Near Northwest Neighborhood and on Lincolnway West by the South Bend Airport.
“When you’re by highways and airports, we find higher concentrations of lead in that area,” St. Joseph County’s Department of Health’s Lead Program Coordinator Micaela Enright said.
Cars previously used leaded gas, which was banned in 1995, but it’s still used in small piston engine aircraft today.
Enright said there was a decrease in lead testing in St. Joseph County during the pandemic, as COVID was at the height of everyone’s mind.
Research published in the Journal of Pediatric Healthcare, “The Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic Restrictions on Lead Screening in a Primary Care Clinic,” reported that non-emergency pediatric care, including screening for lead toxicity, decreased during COVID-19 restrictions. Additionally, quarantines and virtual schooling increased time spent at home, where exposure most likely occurs.
“We are trying to get those numbers back up with their programming,” Enright said, pointing out that those numbers have fluctuated up and down every year since the pandemic began.
Enright said she didn’t know why these numbers fluctuate.
Though the county persists in administering lead tests, the amount of children with elevated lead levels has increased as well, due to lowering the threshold of what's recognized as an elevated blood level.
“The data would reflect that we have more, but that’s actually a good thing,” McCall said. The threshold was changed in July of 2022, which McCall said was to be more reflective of what the CDC recognizes as lead poisoning.
McCall said a child testing with at least 3.5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood is recognized as elevated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Indiana protects children testing at 5 micrograms and above.
“In 2020, a child testing at 10 or above would be considered elevated, per the county,” said McCall. “As of right now, in 2024, if you test at 5 and up, you’re in our case management program.”
Residents can sign up for a lead testing kit through the University of Notre Dame’s Lead Innovation Team.
If the test shows any lead hazards, the St. Joseph County Department of Health will conduct a free lead risk assessment. They also offer free risk assessments for pregnant women and children under 7 years old with or without an elevated lead level. The department's prenatal/perinatal lead program aims to prevent lead poisoning before a baby's birth by eliminating home exposure.
The Department of Health coordinates with the property owner to make sure the necessary issues in the home are being fixed.
“They have 60 days to fix those hazards,” Enright said.
Additionally based on a child’s lead level, they will need to be retested within three months or sooner, she said.
“We would coordinate with the right provider’s office to make sure they have those appointments coming up and to make sure they have those tests for them,” Enright said.
“Certainly, we don’t want parents to feel blame,” McCall said, “but there is lead in their home and there has to be a way to talk about that so that it can be prevented.”
Enright agreed.“It’s not their fault, but it is completely preventable,” she said.
This year, the Department of Health plans to increase its clinical outreach, including speaking to clinical providers and sharing education and resources.
“Our goal is to increase child testing in our county,” Enright said. “A rough estimate is that only around 10% of St. Joseph County children are tested, and we are working to increase that number because we believe every kid should be tested.”
Organizations interested in hosting a presentation about lead poisoning prevention can contact the co-founders of Lead Affinity Group, Kathy Schuth and Heidi Beidinger, by email at nnndirector@nearnorthwest.org or hbeiding@nd.edu. If your organization is interested in hearing about State testing requirements, please contact the St. Joseph County Department of Health’s Micaela Enright at menright@sjcindiana.com.