Page 10 THE EVERETT ADVOCATE – FRiDAy, MARCH 25, 2022 Mass. to Begin Distribution of Premium Payments to Low-Income Workers $500 payments to be sent to 500,000 eligible Massachusetts residents by the end of March and call center now available for constituents with eligibility questions BOSTON – The Baker-Polito Administration announced this week the start of distribution of the fi rst round of $500 payments for low-income workers under the COVID-19 Essential Employee Premium Pay Program. The payments will be mailed to approximately 500,000 people over the next week. These payments were previously announced last month and represent the fi rst round of a $460 million program passed by the Massachusetts Legislature and signed by Governor Baker as part of a $4 billion spending plan for American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. Under this program created by the Legislature, the Administration was provided fl exibility to design the program and develop eligibility parameters to ensure this critical support is provided quickly to workers across the Commonwealth. Massachusetts residents will be eligible for fi rst round payments if, based on fi led 2020 Massachusetts tax returns, their income from employment was at least $12,750 – the equivalent to working 20 hours/week for 50 weeks at minimum wage as of 2020 – and their total income put them below 300% of the federal poverty level. Individuals who received unemployment compensation in 2020 will not be eligible for the first round of payments, nor will Commonwealth executive branch employees who received or will receive a onetime payment from the state as their employer. Eligible individuals will receive the payment in the form of a check mailed to them. Checks will be mailed in batches in the coming days. Click here for more information on eligibility. For questions about eligibility, a dedicated call center is available at (866) 750-9803 and is open Monday through Friday, 9am - 4pm. Click here to view answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs). The legislation creating the Premium Pay program included $500 million in total for low-income essential workers; this $460 million program comprises the majority of those funds, and $40 million was allocated to fund previous agreements with state employee unions. This fi rst round of payments, worth $250 million, will be made based on 2020 returns. Following the 2021 tax fi ling season, the next round of payments will be made using information from 2021 returns. Information on plans to disburse subsequent rounds of funds will be released in the future. AG Healey calls on EPA to strengthen protections to address health dangers of lead A ttorney General Maura Healey recently joined a coalition of 19 attorneys general in calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to strengthen protections against lead poisoning, particularly for children living in underserved and disadvantaged communities that are already overburdened with environmental harm. In its comments, the coalition calls EPA’s “Draft Strategy to Reduce Lead Exposures and Disparities in U.S. Communities” a strong starting point to addressing the serious public health issue of lead poisoning, and lays out further recommendations for how the EPA should strengthen its plan to more aggressively combat the many ways in which people – especially children – are exposed to lead, including through paint, drinking water, soils, aviation fuel, air, food and occupational hazards. “Lead poisoning poses serious long-lasting health risks for our children,” Healey said. “This is a devastating source of health inequity caused by years of systemic injustices, and we are calling on the EPA to move quickly and do more to protect our children from further harm.” Lead is a highly toxic metal that can cause serious and irreversible health effects. percent in 2020 and the prevalence of lead poisoning increased. The multistate coalition’s Maura Healey Attorney General The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that children in at least four million households nationwide are exposed to high levels of lead. A 2021 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics found that more than half of the children in the country have detectable levels of lead in their blood. Lead poisoning is a major health equity issue: That study also found that elevated blood lead levels in children are closely related to poverty, race and their lack of access to newer housing. According to other research, children living in low-income communities in Massachusetts are nearly four times more likely to have elevated blood lead levels. Children who have been exposed to even very low levels of lead are at risk for neurological and physical problems during critical stages of early development. In fact, there is no safe level of lead for children. Children under the age of six are more likely to be exposed to lead than any other age group, as their normal behaviors could result in them chewing lead paint chips, breathing in or swallowing dust from old lead paint that gets on fl oors, windowsills and hands, and eating certain foods, playing in soil and handling other consumer products. According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s 2020 Annual Childhood Lead Poisoning Surveillance Report, lead paint is the primary source of childhood lead exposure in the state, and Massachusetts has the third oldest housing stock in the country, making lead exposure a signifi cant risk for the state’s children. In 2020, 420 children in the state were found to have lead poisoning; however, because of the ongoing public health crisis, lead screening was down 10 comments urge EPA to build on the efforts identified in the draft strategy to increase public health protections, address legacy lead contamination for communities with the greatest risk of exposure and promote environmental justice, by calling on the EPA to implement other aggressive measures, including: • Increasing resources for enforcing existing laws relating to lead paint in rental housing and amending existing regulations to require landlords to increase the frequency of inspections of houses with a history of lead paint hazards • Developing proactive policies and standards for hazardous waste sites, drinking water and other sources of lead exposure that are more protective of public health and designed to reduce lead poisoning • Developing aggressive deadlines for tightening standards, developing enforcement policies and conducting an endangerment determination for lead in aviation gas under the Clean Air Act • Identifying meaningful environmental justice targets to ensure that the communities most in need and vulnerable populations are protected • Encouraging inter-agency collaboration and data-sharing with other federal agencies • Allocating federal funds to replace drinking water service lines containing lead that reach historically marginalized communities • Requiring the testing of water and remediation of lead service lines and lead plumbing fi xtures in public, charter and private schools and in childcare centers • Expanding multilingual informational campaigns and blood lead testing programs to address “take-home lead” exposure – lead from work that accumulates on a worker’s clothing and shoes Joining Healey in submitting the comments were the attorneys general of New York, California, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
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