Newsday from New York, New York • Page 2

i fratf'-nn rt vc TBTAEyes Parks For Lead Chip Clean-Up Queens areas near bridges targeted By Emily Sachar STAFF WRITER Film Gives a Chance To Recall Days ofYore black women rarely appear as folly realized characters I remember a film that came out a few years ago about a young New York working woman whose mother employs a matchmaker to find her a husband In one scene the main character and her girlfriend both white slim and attractive are tying in a sauna wrapped in towels intelligent conversation about the men While refusing for six months to release results of lead tests in the soil beneath its bridges the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority has quietly begun a massive lead clean-up effort at parks around the Bronx-Whitestone and Triborough Bridges officials said yesterday The-newest lead problems center on large paint chips that have fallen from the spans into Astoria Park near the Triborough and into Francis Lewis Park on the Queens side of the Bronx-Whitestone The clean-up does not involve possibly dangerous lead-laden soil caused from sandblasting dust The chips began falling in early February after rapid outside temperature changes according to TBTA spokesman Frank Pascual The orange-and-gray mips look like colored com flakes and can lead to serious health complications if ingested by small children accordingto the city Health Department Lead paint chips are more dangerous than lead in soil because the lead is more concentrated problem is with little kids who are attracted to the bright colors of toe paint chips and then put them in their mouths the same way they pick up and suck on a penny They ingest lead in its purest said Steven Matthews a city Health Department spokesman Playing around soil contaminated with lead is also a problem he said because children eat the dust on their fingers or eat toe dirt directly Lead interferes with the production of red blood cells and may damage the brain kidneys liver and other organs according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta Pascual said that the volume of chips in Astoria Park is very high see them all over the he said why we view the dean-up as a high The authority last week awarded contracts worth $386000 for paint chip dean-up at Astoria Park and Francis Lewis In remarks detailing the contract the TBTA called toe situation and said the lead content of the chips immediate Several other parks Island Park Island Park and Louis Guvillier Park in Manhattan also have been hit with fallen lead paint chips from TBTA bridges and will be cleaned soon Pascual said Meanwhile TBTA officials refuse to discuss toe soil sampling despite repeated requests from union members elected officials and Queens residents Those seeking the results of September 1992 ground testing around the bridges have been told those results are too preliminary to be released Those questioning the safety of playing little League baseball soccer or having picnics there have received terse replies with scant information' The TBTA compromised the public health for months by not diadoaing what is going on with toe lead in this said Peter Tjikaa president of the Bridge and Tunnel Officers Benevolent Association in a weekend interview been hiding for so long shocking" Added George Perilli the health committee chairman of Community Board 7 in Queens know who's hiding here but sure been hard to find out going In January New York Newsday reported that testing soil around the Triborough revealed levels ranging from 647 parts per million to 1394 parts per million Any Iwa level over 1000 parts per milium is considered dangerous by the federal CDC The TBTA has not used lead paint since 1989 but many stretches of jts bridges are still coated with lead paints Ased for decades Jjefore that-v Sr One advantage of being a columnist is being able to spend the day at the movies under the guise of researching a column So last week I went to see Leslie new film a movie that offers plenty pfi takes a look Brooklyn girl the kind of girf wl fleeting image for us on the subway Harris says was trying to illuminate the real person behind the stereotyped girls we see on the train I was bowled over by the energy and the sheer force of personality of Chantel a smart feisty young woman with attitude A good student Chantel plans to finish high school in three years and go on to become a doctor Above all she want to get trapped like her mother into parenthood and a difficult marriage in a housing project in Brooklyn movie is illuminating because it looks beyond the statistics through which we tend to view girls like Chante! into the person beneath a girl who has her own set of aspirations fears and foibles In the recent spate of movies about black urban male youths toe emphasis has been on violence and drugs since these are toe biggest traps for black youths who are strug filing toward adulthood As Another Girl on the shows the sexual trap and i can be the biggest obstacle to poor urban reaching their potential I want to be a teenager todgy When I was in high school my girlfriends and I into sex Neither were most of the guys we knew We knew that a few of our acquaintances were doing it but sexual activity was something the bad and the wild kids did more at that time having sex could ruin your reputation Now the sexual pressure cm teenage girls is tremendous If you indulge not hip or popular You may lose potential boyfriends And you Buffer blows to your self-esteem if inexperienced This is the situation Chantel and her girlfriends face and the question is whether the sexual trap will trip them up and short circuit their ftitures Black women are almost invisible in the movies There are a few exceptions Whoopi Goldberg Robin Sheryl McCarthy camera cuts to a couple afblack women in the same sauna Half naked the Mato women are fat and grotesque and their conversation is filled with crude sexual allusions They are mammy-like figures intended to be a joke and the sharp contrast between the two sets of women makes the black women obvious racial stereotypes In many of the new films by black male filmmakers black women fere well either The sexism in these films is often outrageous and often vicious Even the black women who are presented as wives and girlfriends are referred to repeatedly as bitches and and are seen bong slapped around and abused and degraded in a variety of ways as if in their newfound ability to speak through film their masculinity can be achieved only through the denigration of women In all toe depictions of black women a tendency to portray them either as superwomen dynamic career women or' strong grandmothers raising their grandchildren in tough situations or as victims of pathology chronic welfare mothers drug addicts and prostitutes But in researching her film Harris says she interviewed many young black girls in New York City and what they told her is not what many ofua expect to hear from their lips They md things like: want to be a doctor I want to be a lauryer I want to be an astronaut I want to be a film director But I live in Greene so how can I become In the movie Chantel is threatened with being' trapped into an unwanted pregnancy and an unhappy life just as her mother was But in toe end she because she refuses to surrender to that 1 destiny movie shows that giris like Chantel realty do struggle against the foroas that seek to i i I i- trap them and that they are for more than just Giyensand AlfreWooderd But in commercial filma victims arStafiaticsq.