In 1961, testing of Black and Puerto Rican children in the neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant and Fort Greene revealed hazardous levels of lead. These “lead belt” neighborhoods were also “redlined,” a practice that restricted where non-white families could live.
Dr. Karp, retired Brooklyn Downstate Medical Center pediatrician and expert on lead poisoning in children, will explain the circumstances leading to this geographic overlap and the resulting long term economic and social consequences of lead poisoning.
Robert Karp is Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. He is a native of Philadelphia; he attended Jefferson Medical School and did his pediatric residency at Cornell Medical Center in New York. His career began in Philadelphia with a War on Poverty project followed by 28 years at Brooklyn’s Kings County and Downstate Medical Centers. In the 1990s he was Director of the Kings County Lead Poison Prevention Program.
This event was recorded on December 4, 2023.