WASHINGTON (AP) - A national strategy for reducing lead poisoning should focus on prevention, not screening children after they've been exposed, experts told a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

"The only moral and effective way to deal with childhood lead poisoning is to prevent children from being exposed to lead in the first place," said Nick Farr, executive director of the Maryland-based National Center for Lead-Safe Housing, a research group.

Currently, some public health officials urge parents to get their children routinely screened for exposure to lead, which can cause lowered intelligence, retarded growth and impaired hearing.

But the government - and the paint industry - need to put more money into programs to reduce lead hazards in homes and to educate parents about reducing their children's exposure, said witnesses at a hearing of the Senate subcommittee on housing and transportation.

Farr said a Department of Housing and Urban Development grant program for lead abatement, funded at about $100 million last year, should get four to five times that amount.

"Lead-based paint remains the most serious environmental health hazard for children in the United States," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the subcommittee chairman.

Average blood lead levels in U.S. children have fallen by over 90 percent over the past 20 years, mostly because lead has been eliminated from gasoline and canned foods, said Bruce P. Lanphear, director of the Children's Environmental Health Center in Cincinnati.

But lead paint, outlawed in 1978, still exists in older houses, especially in the Northeast and Midwest. In some cities, over 35 percent of preschool children have blood lead levels over the recommended threshold, he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 890,000 children have blood lead levels at or above the recommended threshold.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.