MILWAUKEE – Lead is virtually invisible to the naked eye, but its negative impacts are hard to miss. The topic is heavy on the minds of people across Milwaukee amid a string of recent school closures due to unsafe lead levels.

What they’re saying:

Metcalfe Park Community Bridges said lead has been an issue for decades. Now, the group is trying to alleviate the issue right in people’s homes.

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“Lead, as we know, causes so many issues,” said Melody McCurtis, the group’s deputy director. “It messes with our minds, our bodies, and all of those different things.”

Concerns about lead are flowing throughout the city of Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Health Department recently identified seven schools with unsafe lead levels. Three of those schools remain closed for cleanup and renovations.

Lead filter giveaway

Local perspective:

McCurtis said she speaks from experience; she had lead poisoning as a kid. Now, Metcalfe Park Community Bridges is looking to help people lose the lead in their water by filtering it out at home.

“These lead filtration systems will help folks have some type of drinking water at home, where that means is not contamination by lead,” she said.

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On Saturday, the group hosted an event in the Metcalfe Park neighborhood. Roughly 60 people signed up to receive free filters.

“We’ll know that by hooking them up to the kitchen sink that it’s running through, being purified,” neighbor Latisha Bully-White said.

“I think it’s important because it starts off at home,” said neighbor Monifa Johnson.

Lead water filter for Metcalfe Park Community Bridges giveaway

Citywide attention

What’s next:

McCurtis said the decades-long issue needs to come to an end, and they’re pushing the city for long-term solutions while turning to filters for a short-term fix. 

“You don’t want lead in the body, lead does not belong in our bodies. We should not be drinking it,” she said.

Metcalfe Park Community Bridges will be going door-to-door, McCurtis said, to get more people to sign up for filtration systems. She said they will get the filters on April 18 and teach people how to use them shortly after.