By Jenny SongThe Daily Northwestern

Maria Diaz Garfias worries about her son, who she says has frequent problems with his memory.

Suspecting the long-term effects of exposure to lead when her son was a child, she wanted to learn more. Her options were limited – she doesn’t speak English.

Diaz Garfias attended a Spanish-language workshop organized by the city for residents to answer questions about lead poisoning and removing lead from their homes.

The workshop Tuesday drew about 25 members of the Evanston Latino community who said they were happy with the city’s efforts.

Evanston offers no formal bilingual services, but occasionally provides workshops in both English and Spanish.

Adelita Hernandez, Evanston’s outreach specialist, connects residents who don’t speak English with city staff members who can communicate with them. She often serves as a translator, as she did in Tuesday’s lead poisoning workshop.

The residents who attended the workshop were overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking, said Fortino Leon, an Evanston resident, because the Latino population is over-represented in Evanston’s poor.

“We got to go where the rent is cheap, and sometimes they’re not the best places to be,” Leon said.

But Hernandez said lead poisoning is a problem for the entire Evanston community.

“It doesn’t matter if you live in a million-dollar home on the lake or in … the worst house there is,” she said.

Offering the workshop in Spanish provided some with the opportunity to understand fully how to solve their hazardous lead dilemmas.

“I work maintenance in a school, and it’s important to protect the kids from lead,” said Evanston resident Abelardo Mendoza.

Some said they hoped the city would extend bilingual services even further in the future. Leon said he would like to see financial workshops in Spanish about how to save money to send kids to college or buy a first home.

But the workshop was a good start, he said.

Helen Binns, a doctor at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, spoke through Hernandez on Tuesday to workshop attendees about how high levels of lead in the first three years of a child’s life can interrupt growth in the brain.

“At that age, brains are developing very rapidly, and the lead changes how the brain develops,” she said.

Those changes can result in problems with memory and learning later in life. Adolescents who had been exposed to lead in their childhood can have difficulty focusing and may be aggressive, Binns said.

Evanston residents with old homes are at a high risk for lead poisoning because the Midwest was a “lead belt” – many houses in Evanston were built before 1940 when lead was a common ingredient in paint, Binns said.

City officials recommended that residents take advantage of grants from the Cook County Department of Public Health to remove lead hazards from their homes.

For children who have already been exposed to high levels of lead, parents should engage them in cerebral exercise to mitigate the effects. Binns recommended reading every day with affected children.

Reach Jenny Song at [email protected].