Metal Firm to Pay for Lead Tests : Poisoning: In a plea agreement, the recycler will pay the county $200,000 for an 18-month screening program.

A metal recycling company accused of exposing workers to lead poisoning at its Paramount plant avoided a criminal trial by paying $200,000 Wednesday to finance a new occupational lead-screening program in Los Angeles County.

The contribution by Federated Weiner Metals will enable the Department of Health Services to hire specialized staff and equipment to visit about 100 factories where workers are exposed to potentially hazardous levels of lead. Employers who willfully exceeded federal and state lead-exposure levels could be prosecuted.

The funding will last for about 18 months. However, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner said he hopes new criminal cases developed by increased surveillance will generate similar settlements. The money could be used to make the lead-screening program a permanent fixture, he said.

County health officials, anticipating the settlement, have already drawn up a budget for the new program.

“This is a program that the county should have developed years ago on its own, but every year it’s the same problem--lack of funds,” Reiner said.

Jan Chatten Brown, Reiner’s special assistant for workplace safety, said the inspection program “will have a major impact, dramatically reducing occupational lead poisoning. . . . There’s nothing that exists now for anything like this.”

Nearly 5,000 workers in Los Angeles County--most of them employed in hazardous industries, and a disproportionate number of them Latinos--reported high lead levels in their blood in 1989. Officials say that nearly 300 industrial facilities in the county are exposing 10,000 to 30,000 workers to potentially significant levels of lead, and that employers’ monitoring of lead levels is abysmal.

Lead poisoning--contracted by inhaling tiny particles or swallowing contaminated food--is found most often in battery manufacturing plants, lead smelters, brass foundries and radiator repair shops. It can cause kidney damage and injury to the nervous system. In some cases, workers’ children may absorb it through contact with parents’ skin or clothing.

Wednesday’s plea bargain grew out of misdemeanor criminal charges that Reiner’s office filed against Federated and two company officials in 1989. The company had been fined $202,900 a year earlier by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration for repeatedly exposing workers at its Paramount plant to dangerously high levels of lead. Federated, which is headquartered in Pennsylvania, has since closed the facility.

The district attorney’s office agreed to drop 32 counts and the company agreed to pay $25,000 in fines and penalties and contribute $200,000 to the lead-screening program. The district attorney’s office also dismissed all charges against the plant’s manager, David A. Haller, 35, of La Habra, in exchange for his agreement to testify in court later this year against Federated’s president, Michael Baker, 42, of Los Angeles.

Baker faces trial Oct. 22 on misdemeanor charges of having knowingly violated several state safety orders requiring management to limit lead exposure.

Federated’s attorney, C.G. Gordon Martin, said the company settled the case “to resolve the matter. . . . The money’s certainly going to a good cause.”

Although OSHA introduced a lead standard more than a decade ago, several recent state studies have shown that employer monitoring practices are inadequate.

Only 2.6% of lead-using industries attempt to measure the levels of lead in their work environments, and only 1.4% perform routine biological tests, such as measuring employees’ blood levels, according to state health officials.

The average person’s lead level is 6 micrograms per deciliter of blood. Levels above 30 to 40 micrograms decrease the body’s ability to form red blood cells. Weakness sets in when levels rise above 60 micrograms. The OSHA standard says that a worker must be removed from his job when his level is 60 micrograms or higher.

Lead exposure before or during pregnancy may increase the chance of miscarriage. That fear was the central issue in a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year. Justices overruled a Milwaukee-based battery manufacturer that had banned women of childbearing age from working in jobs that exposed them to high lead levels.

State health officials began a pilot lead-screening program last year focusing on radiator service companies in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. Radiator repair workers, who often are employed by small companies, are among the least likely workers to be monitored for lead exposure.