Milwaukee mom says federal aid helps families like hers who struggle with lead poisoning

When Milwaukee mom Deanna Branch first started speaking out about her family’s experience with lead poisoning, she thought she’d be inspiring others in her community and raising awareness among her neighbors. She never thought she’d reach a national stage, let alone meet and share her story with the vice president and the president.

That’s where Branch’s activism has taken her, though. Branch has gone from sharing her story with members of her church to telling it on stage at the Democratic National Convention in August, where she also praised federal funding that’s been allocated to remove lead pipes across Wisconsin.

President Joe Biden has set a goal of replacing every lead pipe in the nation, and in May, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that Wisconsin was receiving more than $83 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to replace lead pipes. There are estimated to be more than 158,000 lead pipes across Wisconsin, according to the latest data from the state’s Public Service Commission, with about 65,000 in Milwaukee alone.

“This is the first time in my 11 years of advocacy that I’m actually seeing change, I’m actually seeing money going to the right places to make sure that our kids have a future,” Branch told the Wisconsin Independent.

Anger into advocacy

Branch first noticed her son Aidan was having behavioral issues at age 2, but his pediatrician at the time brushed them off as a case of the “terrible twos.” Eventually Branch and her family moved to a new neighborhood and went to a clinic that screened for lead poisoning, where they found high levels of lead in Aidan’s system. Branch was advised that Aidan be seen by a doctor, who recommended Aidan be immediately hospitalized.

Lead poisoning can cause lifelong health issues and developmental delays in children and adults. It can cause damage to the brain and kidneys, it presents differently in every person, and often there are no symptoms. The most common sources of lead exposure are lead paint and lead pipes.

After Branch’s landlord replaced the windows in their home, Aidan was discharged from the hospital with medication. Branch thought that would be the end of it. But when Aidan was roughly 6 years old, he was hospitalized again, this time with higher levels of lead in his system than before.

Testing showed that lead was more widespread in Branch’s house than they thought — in more of the paint, in the pipes, and in the soil.

The family was forced to leave the home, but there were few resources for them. Branch struggled financially and had to stay with family, then in a shelter. Eventually she lost her job because Aidan’s care took up a lot of time.

“I just felt like a failure, and I felt like it was me against the world because I’m living paycheck to paycheck, I’m on a lease, I can’t break my lease,” she said.

She started to share her family’s story at her church in Milwaukee and soon learned that lead poisoning was widespread in her community. In looking through old medical records, Branch found that she had been exposed to lead as a child, too. This caused her to turn her anger into advocacy.

“I thought lead poisoning was a foreign thing or foreign name to me. But when I did the research, lead has been a staple in my community, in my environment all my life, and I just wasn’t aware,” she said. “So I feel now that I’m aware, and now I know how to defeat it.”

Branch helped launch the Coalition on Lead Emergency, but has since left the group and is now an activist. She and her family speak at events and raise awareness on staying safe from lead, by removing your shoes when you enter the house, for example, using filtered water, dusting, or eating foods that help fight off lead poisoning. She and her sons wrote and illustrated a book together, about a lead-free superhero who fights the “lead monsters,” that they hand out to kids at events.

Promises kept

In January 2022, Branch met with Vice President Kamala Harris to share her story, and a few months later, she was invited by the White House to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

Branch said that while having her story reach the White House seemed promising, she was skeptical that anything would get done.

“I never expected it to be heard nationally, and that made me hopeful, especially when I shook Joe Biden’s hand and he said, ‘Things are going to get better. There’s going to be a change.’ I really wanted to believe him, but it wasn’t until I actually saw the lead pipes being removed, and now I’m driving past signs saying the Bipartisan Infrastructure [Law] is removing the lead pipes,” she said.

When she first started her advocacy work, plans to remove Milwaukee’s lead pipes were expected to take about 60 years. But with the funding, that work is now expected to be completed in the next 10 years.

“So I’ll actually be alive to witness that,” she said. She hopes her grandchildren won’t know what lead poisoning is.

Branch knows that while replacing the lead pipes is a start, there’s still work to be done. She wants to start a nonprofit that will address health inequities, environmental issues, and the lack of quality affordable housing. And while she now lives in a lead-safe house, she knows many of her neighbors still don’t.

“I’m just grateful for the start,” she said. “It’s definitely the start, the beginning, not the end yet.”