Lead exposure risk in Latine communities
Members of racial and ethnic minority groups, immigrants, refugees, and people who live in low income areas are known to be at greater risk for lead exposure. Latine* communities make up a part of the high risk groups as they are an ethnic minority that tend to live in areas with past land use, aging infrastructure, and older homes.
This website is a resource in Spanish and English to learn about lead, sources of lead exposure, effects of lead contamination, and interventions to reduce exposure. Displayed are also quotes from the Latine community of Norristown, Pennsylvania about how lead impacts them and their community, exhibiting the necessity to address lead exposure risk. The quotes were collected as a part of a community-based participatory research program (CBPR) project between CCATE and Villanova University.
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*We have chosen the term Latine over Latinx, Latino, Latina, and Hispanic for its gender neutral stance and ability to be pronounced more easily than Latinx by Spanish speakers.
Pictured above is an image of Norristown, Pennsylvania. The Latine community of Norristown was interviewed to learn more about how lead impacts them individually, as a geographical community, and an ethnic community.
History of Norristown, Pennsylvania
Location + Industrial/Retail Center
Norristown is a municipality in Pennsylvania, located 15 miles northwest of Philadelphia, along the Schuylkill River. Norristown was a large industrial and retail center in the 1800’s and early 1900’s with factories, lumber yards, sawmills, and textile mills.
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Large Hispanic Population
Waves of Hispanic immigrants increased throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a large surge of Latinos, mostly Mexicans, arriving in the twenty-first century. In 1990, there were 828 Hispanics in Norristown (2.7% of the population), increasing to 3,282 (10.5%) in 2000 and then to 9,700 (28.3%) in 2010. According to the United States Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2023, 27.4% of Norristown’s population was Hispanic or Latino.
Norristown's location and history as a large industrial center along with their large Latine community is an example that high risk populations for lead exposure risk, including members of racial and ethnic minority groups, are disproportionately more likely to live on or closer to previous or current industrial sites due to racism and residential segregation.
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With being an industrial center also comes industrial pollution through its factories, lumber yards, sawmills and textile mills. Pollutants spread and maintained their presence in soil, paint and dust that the Norristown community is still exposed to.
As a result of increased exposure, the Latine community can become contaminated with lead and experience adverse health effects including cognitive, hearing, speech, behavioral, and intellectual problems as well as decreased fertility and hypertension to name a few.
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Pictured above is another image of Norristown, Pennsylvania.
Address
1246 West Main Street Norristown, Pennsylvania 19401
Phone
(484) 685-3633