Dozens of Baltimore-area properties certified as free of lead-based paint in the past two years still may be chock full of the toxic metal, which is capable of irreversibly damaging a child’s cognitive development.

According to a recent lawsuit filed by the Maryland Department of the Environment, a Baltimore-based lead inspection firm called Green Environmental illegally assessed properties, altered the results of dust sample tests, and used unlicensed and unregistered equipment to issue lead-free certificates.

Such documents represent an all-clear for the properties and their landlords. With lead-free certificates in hand, owners aren’t required to test those properties for lead paint ever again.

From November 2023 to April 2024, Green Environmental and its owner, Rodney Bryan Barkley, performed 148 inspections and granted 131 “lead-free” certificates.

A catalogue of inspection sites included in the lawsuit shows that Green Environmental did much of its work in Baltimore, where lead-based paint once poisoned thousands of children a year. But the company has done inspections all over Maryland since Barkley became licensed to do the work in 2019, from Bethesda to Hagerstown to Middle River. He’s also a certified lead risk assessor in Washington, D.C., according to a 2020 index.

According to the lawsuit, MDE regulators first became suspicious of Green Environmental’s work in March, so they arranged to accompany Barkley to a few inspections around Baltimore.

Barkley didn’t show up for an initial appointment at a Reisterstown Road property. A few days later, officials accompanied him to a home with poor paint conditions, where Barkley said he would issue a failed inspection report. He canceled a separate inspection appointment the next day, after MDE confirmed its plans to audit him there.

A few days later, regulators joined Barkley at another Reisterstown Road home.

There they found he was using a specialized X-ray tool made to analyze for lead paint on the wrong setting — invalidating his tests. A regulator noticed that Green Environmental’s analyzer had been licensed just a week earlier, a coincidence that Barkley said was because his old tool had reached its expiration date.

Also troubling, investigators learned later, Barkley altered reports submitted after taking dust samples at two properties that changed the results — in at least one case changing a lead-positive result into a negative.

A broader review of Green Environmental’s work found that since February 2022, Barkley illegally issued lead-free certificates to at least 92 properties.

The Maryland Office of the Attorney General, which filed the lawsuit on MDE’s behalf, referred questions to its court filings.

Barkley did not respond to emails or phone calls, and no one answered when a reporter knocked on the door of his Station North home. Green Environmental, meanwhile, is registered to a P.O. Box in the Mt. Vernon Market Center strip mall on Guilford Avenue.

Green Environmental’s website describes the company as a “small black-owned business” offering a range of lead-based paint testing services.

“Our families have personally experienced the negative impacts of lead poisoning,” the site states, “so we are personally invested and deeply committed to improving the safety outcomes of Maryland’s children and families, particularly the black and brown communities who are most effected by exposure to lead.”

Even as regulators have cracked down on lead in homes since the 1990s, dramatically reducing the number of children poisoned by lead, the neurotoxin remains a hazard in some old buildings as paint peels and chips off the walls. A 2022 report by the Abell Foundation found that more than 85,000 Baltimore housing units still contained dangerous lead hazards — a problem researchers estimated would cost as much as $4.2 billion to abate.

Even in trace amounts, lead dust can cause learning problems. Thresholds of lead intake that a few decades ago were considered safe are now believed to be far above levels that can hamper a child’s cognitive development.

Lead poisoning has taken a tragic toll on Baltimore and Maryland residents through the years, but local officials also have been at the forefront of national efforts to eradicate the problem, said Ruth Ann Norton, president of the nonprofit Green and Healthy Homes Initiative.

In 1951, Baltimore became the first city in the country to ban the use of lead in paint. Decades later, in 1994, the state adopted a landmark lead abatement law of its own, and an expanded version of that statute today requires any rental home built before 1978 to take steps to remediate the risks of lead poisoning.

Typically, old houses must be reassessed each time a new tenant moves in, but any home that is inspected and found to be “lead-free” is cleared from ever needing inspections again.

That’s why the invalid certificates that Green Environmental allegedly issued are so significant, said Norton, who also serves on the Maryland Lead Poisoning Prevention Commission and has championed the state’s aggressive approach to lead for decades.

While it’s not clear from the lawsuit whether state investigators believe Barkley intentionally falsified lead-free certificates or did so negligently, Norton said there’s a sad history of contractors and landlords in Baltimore fudging test results.

Not just anyone can get hired to do this work: Inspectors must be MDE-approved.

In its lawsuit, the state alleges 14 counts of environmental violations by Barkley and his business, including for altering paint sample tests, improperly operating his X-ray lead detection analyzer, and possessing unregistered lead paint analyzers for more than eight years.

The consequences could be severe.

Penalties for violating the state’s lead inspection laws reach up to $25,000 per violation, some of them assessed for each day of infraction. The state has asked the court in its lawsuit to impose penalties on Green Environmental and Barkley that — if maximally enforced — would total nearly $150 million.

In the meantime, regulators have suspended Green Environmental’s inspection license and impounded its X-ray analyzers.

Green Environmental has gotten high marks from clients on customer review websites. One resident in Towson contracted Green Environmental to inspect an old home she planned to purchase in 2020, and explained in her review that she wanted to ensure the place was safe for her new baby.

“We would HIGHLY recommend hiring Green Environmental!” the reviewer wrote.

Alexander Cruz, a partner with property owner CR of Maryland, said his company had no reason to worry about Green Environmental until receiving notice in the mail from MDE that several of its lead-free certificates had been voided.

CR of Maryland had hired Green Environmental to inspect dozens of properties. But after learning of the state’s investigation, the company immediately cut off dealings with Green Environmental and reassessed all of the properties it had inspected.

Cruz said he’s not aware of MDE discovering lead in any CR of Maryland homes inspected by Green Environmental, and those properties have since been recertified by a different company.

Whether environmental regulators have alerted tenants in the nearly 100 properties with voided lead-free certificates about any potential dangers in their homes isn’t clear.

MDE declined to answer a series of questions about the origins of its investigation into Green Environmental or the specific properties granted lead-free certificates.

Norton praised the department for enforcing the state’s strong lead-remediation laws and cracking down on problematic inspectors.

The stakes are clear, she said.

“We don’t need 92 or more kids going to the Baltimore City school system with their brains fried.”