“What’s it?” RFK Jr. waffles on cuts to lead the efforts to prevent poisoning

“We have a team in Milwaukee,” testified health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Hearing on Tuesday.

He spoke about one Leading crisis In the public schools there. The City Health Department had to tackle the experts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to tackle it. “We offer laboratory support for the analyzes in Milwaukee and we work together with the health department in Milwaukee,” Kennedy added.

But Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin, from Wisconsin, had a different story. “There were no staff on the ground in Milwaukee to tackle the exposure of children in schools,” she said. Six schools in the city had to close because of lead, she said, with 1,800 students being moved.

So is there a team of federal headdexperts in Milwaukee or not?

“There is no team in Milwaukee,” Milwaukee Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis tells npr. “We had one [federal] Personnel person comes to Milwaukee for a short period of time to help validate a machine, but that was independently of the formal request that we had for a small team to actually come to Milwaukee for our Milwaukee Public Schools research and continuous support there. “

Totoraitis says that Secretary Kennedy might have been misinformed.

The contradictions about this program that could be seen on Capitol Hill on Tuesday are symbolic of the approach to Kennedy for the Health Institutions. He speaks passionately about the health of children and the threats of environmental oxins for the health of Americans, but he has difficulty explaining specific actions that has taken his freedom of choice to reduce and restructure, even in those areas he says it is his priority.

Dismissed staff, but the ‘Continuing’ program

Lead is a neurotoxin that is common in older buildings, especially in paint and pipes. It can cause developmental problems in children.

On April 1, the staff of the head poisoning prevention program of the CDC was dismissed as part of the reduction of the agency. The program included epidemiologists, statisticians and advisers who specialized in lead poisoning – of detecting the source of exposure to planning an effective response.

At an event a few days later, a ABC News reporter Kennedy asked about that main team that was cut. “There were some programs that were cuts that were restored. I believe that is one of those,” he said.

Not so, CDC staff who had worked on that team told NPR, because none of them had heard anything about recovering. Kennedy’s own communication staff at HHS too ABC told“The staff for that current division, how it exists now, will not be restored. The work will continue elsewhere at HHS.”

Last week, Baldwin was asked in a hearing of the congress budget. “Are you planning to eliminate this branch at CDC?” she asked.

Kennedy replied, “No, we don’t do that.” He also said he thought that lead poisoning in children was an ‘extremely important care’.

On Tuesday, Kennedy appeared for another senate committee, and Senator Jack Reed, Dr.I., Kennedy asked to clarify what was going on. “As far as we can see, the staff has not yet been hired and I have not seen any statements that reverse your decision to eliminate the program.”

So, Reed said, “What is it?”

Kennedy replied: “We will continue to finance the program.” He added: “I understand that the program is going on”, and he offered to talk to drove after the hearing to “find out what the details are”.

NPR asked HHS if one of the dismissals for the CDC staff who had worked on that team had been withdrawn. In a statement, HHS replied: “While HHS completes its detailed reorganization plans, the department will investigate all strategic programs and priorities for the secretary and the nation. The work of this program will continue.”

HHS did not answer a follow -up question to clarify or that means that the staff will repeat or do work with contractors or something else.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard wrote: “CDC helps to validate new lab instruments used for testing Milieu -Lead” at the request of the Milwaukee Health Department.

During his testimony, Kennedy said before three different congress panels that he cannot speak in detail about the reorganization because of continuous court cases. He said earlier that CDC had “mission creep” and will only tackle infectious diseases in the future.

Kennedy plans to open a new agency, called the administration for a healthy America – AHA – to work on chronic diseases, mental health and other health problems, but details of the timeline for when it will be active and who will not be made public.

The American senator Tammy Baldwin, D.-Wis., Speaks on Tuesday with the press after the policy of the Democrats on Tuesday.

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“You can’t just lower the financing, fire everyone, hit a slogan on a new agency and say that the work will continue,” Baldwin told Kennedy during the hearing. “Your decision to dismiss staff and eliminate offices is to endanger children, including thousands of children in Milwaukee. If you have a proposal to make these programs work better, present and justify.”

Milwaukee says it still needs support

Totoraitis, the health commissioner of Milwaukee, says it is strange that the local main reaction has been the center of this national story about the restructuring of federal health agencies.

“Unfortunately, I see this crisis as this canary in the coal mine of what is dismantled and what may become really catastrophic for our country,” he says.

At the moment it has been found that various school -going children have a high level of lead in their blood, which can be traced back to schools. In the past, the health department has had to deal with lead poisoning in housing. “This is a huge pivot for our department to investigate schools now,” he says. “The district has more than 140 school buildings, all of which have a number of different levels of lead relisys.”

They wanted CDC expertise to help manage this crisis and had worked for months on a formal request for support from CDC employees, he says.

“They would send that team to Milwaukee to help us with the research, screening, data management,” he says. As soon as the federal staff was completely dismissed, the request was formally refused, he explains, “because they had no experts on the subject within the entire CDC to support the lead research in children that we did.”

Totoraitis says that the main crisis of the public school in his city has not stopped, and now his local team is finding out how to manage without the expert support from CDC.

Do you have a tip? NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin can be contacted by coded communication at Selena.02 on Signal.

Yuki Noguchi from NPR contributed to this report.