The national lead risk map

Every county in America, scored for how likely childhood lead exposure is, built from public Census data on housing age and poverty. The same method public-health researchers use, made current, complete, and free.

3,222 counties and 83,388 census tracts. U.S. Census ACS 2022. No login, no paywall.

Hover for a county's score. To zoom: scroll, use + / −, or right-click to zoom in. Drag to pan. The 🔍 button turns on click-to-zoom. Brighter (mint green) means higher predicted risk; dark is lower.

Lower risk

Higher risk Risk is a national percentile from housing age + poverty.

Built, then lost

For a decade, people mapped where lead risk is highest. Then the public record started disappearing.

2016

Reuters mapped real childhood blood-lead tests from a 50-state public-records dig and found 2,606 census tracts with lead rates at least double the peak of Flint.

2016

Vox built a national neighborhood lead-risk map from housing age and poverty. It still loads, frozen on 2014 Census data, now a decade stale.

Feb 2025

The EPA pulled EJScreen, its lead and pollution mapping tool, off epa.gov. Volunteers at the Public Environmental Data Partners rebuilt and re-hosted it.

Now

The closest current tool, NYU's City Health Dashboard, only covers tracts inside cities of 50,000+. Rural towns stay blank. PolicyMap covers them, but it is a paid product.

So we recovered it, and finished it

Before the data could vanish for good, we pulled it down and rebuilt the map the public version never finished: current, national, every neighborhood including rural, free.

EPA hotspots

73,031

tracts preserved from the dataset behind EPA's 2024 hotspots study

EJScreen

86,082

tracts of the lead-paint layer EPA took offline, restored from the mirror

We scored

83,388

census tracts, current ACS 2022, the full country down to the block

Validated

~4M

children's real blood-lead tests this method was checked against

How it is built

Two public numbers predict the risk: the age of a neighborhood's housing and its poverty rate. Older homes carry lead paint and lead pipes; poverty tracks deferred maintenance and older stock. We pull both from the U.S. Census for every county and tract, weight the oldest housing the way the Washington State Department of Health does, and score each place against the rest of the country. A 2024 EPA study validated this exact approach against roughly 4 million children's measured blood-lead levels. No map can prove your own home is safe. It can only tell you the odds, which is why this one ends at a test.

Sources: Reuters, Off the Charts (2016) · EDGI, EJScreen removal (2025) · Public Environmental Data Partners (EJScreen mirror) · Zartarian et al., Environmental Science & Technology (2024) · NYU City Health Dashboard · U.S. Census American Community Survey 2022 5-year (tables B25034, B01003, S1701).

The map finds the risk. The test confirms it.

If your area runs high, you do not have to guess. Test your own dishes, cookware, and painted surfaces at home.

Get the Fluoro-Spec lead test