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It's an environmental problem that won't go away.

Nearly 30 years after toxic lead was banned in paint, and 20 years after it was virtually eliminated from gasoline, lead poisoning in kids remains a significant, although diminished, threat in inner-city Tucson and some other city areas, health officials say.

Although lead levels in kids' blood have dropped greatly across the country since the 1970s, virtually all of Tucson's urban core remains at high risk for lead poisoning of children, according to Arizona Department of Health Services records.

The high-risk areas, whose total population is about 233,000, generally have older housing, lower-than-normal incomes and unusually high percentages of Hispanic residents.

Nearly 20,000 kids under age 6 — those most vulnerable to lead poisoning — live in 62 census tracts considered high risk, census figures show.

Nearly 75 percent of kids with lead poisoning statewide are Hispanic. State health officials say they don't know why Hispanic children are more vulnerable than other ethnic groups.

Pima County has about 190,000 homes built before lead paint was banned in 1978.

The paint can chip, flake or crumble on its own, or be released into the environment by people renovating or repainting their homes. Then it can be eaten or inhaled in dust or soil by children.

Other common causes of lead contamination are pottery, candies and metal objects imported from Mexico that are tainted with lead.

The number of children found with elevated blood-lead levels is relatively small — 145 in Pima County from 2001 to 2005.

At 20 to 30 cases a year, that's at most 1 percent out of the 3,000 kids tested for lead in Pima County each year. That's far lower than lead-contamination rates in older, Eastern cities. Statewide, 160 to 260 kids are diagnosed with blood-lead poisoning each year.

But the number of children with lead contamination in Tucson could be higher than known.

Barely 10 percent of 33,000 kids under age 6 in Pima County who are covered by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the health-care program for low-income people, are tested for lead each year. AHCCCS requires screening of all participating children when they are 1 and 2 years old, and at 3 and 4 years if they weren't tested earlier.

Specific details about lead poisoning of individual children couldn't be obtained because the state Department of Health Services, citing federal privacy laws, would not release them.

But health risks from lead poisoning are serious, officials say. At high levels, it can cause severe brain damage, seizures, comas and death.

Long-term exposure to lower levels causes more subtle, harder-to-detect problems: learning disabilities, slower growth, central-nervous-system damage, poor muscle coordination and reduced IQ.

One 2003 federal study from the National Institutes of Health, for instance, found that a child's IQ can drop by as much as seven points at the lowest blood-lead level where health officials normally take action to reduce exposure.

Leslie Boyer, medical director of the University of Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, cautioned that other studies have found less-serious health effects in kids exposed to even higher lead levels. But she agreed that scientific evidence supports the concern that even very low lead levels can cause a decrease in IQ scores.

High-level, short-term exposures can also cause headaches, stomachaches, appetite loss, fatigue, irritability and vomiting.

The biggest risks are for children, whose brains and nervous systems aren't fully developed and are more vulnerable.

Yet serious, long-term disease from lead contamination can be prevented if doctors catch the high blood-lead levels in time through testing, health officials say.

The lead poisoning can be treated — at low levels by simply removing lead-based pottery or other potential contaminants from the home, at high levels through more complex therapy.

Authorities already routinely test all newborns for numerous diseases that are less common than lead poisoning, said Dr. Andrew Arthur, associate medical director of pediatrics at El Rio Health Center, 839 W. Congress St., which caters primarily to low-income families.

"Lead is a completely preventable cause of decreased intelligence in children," he said. "It is not common, but it's not exceedingly rare, either. But it's a silent threat. Except for kids with high levels of lead, there are no obvious symptoms."

The area the state found to be at highest risk for lead poisoning lies just south of Downtown, containing parts or all of three very old neighborhoods: Armory Park, Barrio Viejo and Barrio Santa Rosa.

There, more than half of the houses — 705 — were built before 1940, compared with 6 percent countywide. The median household income of $22,611 in 1999 was 61 percent of the countywide median income then. Nearly 60 percent of the area's residents are Hispanic, compared to 32 percent countywide.

"The government should help people to remove the paint," said Pedro Gonzales, a lifelong Barrio Viejo resident and head of its neighborhood association. "They should tell everyone about the high-risk status. They do have a responsibility. They are the ones who approved these products."

The combination of aging housing stock and a largely untested child population have caused health officials, environmental advocates and a City Council member to call for:

● Testing more children.

● Creating a city pilot program to systematically test older homes for lead paint.

● Offering financial help to families to remove it.

"The impact on the child's life is monumental," said City Councilman Steve Leal, whose South Side Ward 5 includes one of the two highest-risk census tracts for lead within city limits.

"If they found 100 to 150 cases in five years, but you go, 'Well, how many are really out there,' let's assume that it's four to six times more. That's a lot of kids, especially if you can nip this in the bud" with treatment, Leal said.

Yet some pediatricians say the current federal requirements for testing kids should be scaled back, to reach only those in high-risk zones.

They cite a study just published by the American Academy of Pediatrics that found no evidence testing kids for lead poisoning improves their health, or that universal screening is more successful in preventing serious health problems than more targeted screening of a select group of kids.

"It's a tremendous waste of state resources to require that lead tests be done on everyone" under age 6 in the AHCCCS program, said Dr. David Allen, a Northwest Side pediatrician who says his patients come generally from areas with more modern housing. "I have not had a high lead level on any of my patients for 10 years.

"Think of all of the hundreds of kids that have been stuck with needles, all the blood tests being done, all at low levels of lead and the costs of doing it. If I were down in the barrio where you have older buildings, it would be a different issue."

Another Tucson pediatrician, Dr. Keith Dveirin, said it's naturally hard to draw blood from the vein of a 1- or 2-year-old child. It's traumatic for kids, causing parents not to bring the child back in for a later round of testing even when it's required by the state, he said.

But the ease of treating kids with lead poisoning makes testing important, other physicians say. The longer lead goes untreated in the bloodstream, the more concentrated it can get if the kids stay exposed to it.

"If I have lead poisoning and nobody knows it, it can be absolutely devastating," said Dr. Mohammad H. Nomaan, a Northwest Side pediatrician.

If he were to test 100 kids in Pima County at 9 months old, close to 25 percent would have some lead, he said. Most would have well below the 10 micrograms per deciliter level at which physicians start monitoring kids regularly and where they often have the first signs of brain and nervous-system damage, he said.

"To me, having 25 percent of 9-month-old children with lead is significant — it tells me there is still enough out there for a baby to get it," Nomaan said.

Efforts are being made to make more families aware of lead poisoning. The nonprofit Our Family Services agency, for instance, says it has reached more than 1,000 people with various types of presentations about lead.

"Every place I go, if I reach one person who says, 'Oh, my God, my kid hasn't been tested,' I've done my job," said Laurie Riker-Finkle, facilitator for the agency's "Get the Lead Out" awareness program.