A city responding to a lead crisis in local schools reached out to the CDC for help. Now, they fear they won’t get it

A CDC team helping respond to a lead crisis in Milwaukee schools was cut as part of a widespread layoffs at federal health agencies this week.

A few months ago, a test revealed that a child in Milwaukee had elevated levels of lead in their blood. The results triggered an investigation into the family’s home, then the child’s school and then dozens more aging school buildings still riddled with lead paint. With 68,000 students in the Milwaukee Public Schools district and dozens of buildings potentially affected, the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Michael Totoraitis, knew that he needed more help, so he reached out to the National Center for Environmental Health, a division of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to make a plan to address the threat. For the past two months, Totoraitis has been working with a medical toxicologist to triage, essentially, which schools and children might need additional screening and how to understand the lead levels they might find. On Tuesday, he got an email that made his stomach drop. The environmental health team he had been working with at the CDC had been cut, swept up in a massive layoff of federal health workers that’s hitting entire divisions of some agencies. Many employees were immediately placed on administrative leave and are no longer able to access their work.