NAACP ready to sue firms over lead paint

NEW ORLEANS — NAACP president Kweisi Mfume says the civil rights organization is preparing to sue the lead paint industry in an effort to hold it accountable for health problems linked to lead in paint.

Mfume, who announced the planned lawsuit Sunday, said more details would be released later this week during the 92nd annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He did not specify which companies would be sued.

"For us it's a civil rights issue because you ought to have every reasonable expectation that as an American, you have the right to grow up in an environmentally safe situation, where you're not put at risk," Mfume said.

Lead-based paint was widely used in homes until it was banned in 1978. At high levels, lead can cause kidney damage, seizures, coma and death. Children are most commonly exposed to lead by inhaling lead-paint dust or eating paint flakes.

"This affects everybody," Mfume said. "This is not a black problem in the ghetto or in white suburbia. It's everywhere these houses exist."

During the group's convention, which runs through Thursday, NAACP leaders are expected to tackle issues of criminal justice, election reform and diversity on television.

Earlier Sunday, NAACP board chairman Julian Bond lashed out at President Bush's record in his first months in office, criticizing some of his Cabinet choices and denouncing his faith-based initiative.

Bush has "appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing, and he picked Cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection," Bond said.

About 4,500 gathered to hear Bond's speech, applauding and laughing at some of his criticisms.

"I'm hopeful maybe this will rally us," said Kay Porter of Garland, Texas. In 2004, "hopefully we'll have a Democratic president."

"The comments made by Mr. Bond are another reminder about why the tone in Washington needs to be changed," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday.

Bond especially assailed the civil rights records of Interior Secretary Gale Norton, a former Colorado attorney general, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"The president who promised to unite, not divide, chose as a secretary of the interior a woman who opposed racially equitable scholarships, a woman who refused to defend her state's support of a business fairness program," Bond said.