The head of the City Council investigations committee says the Health Department needs to align its definition of lead poisoning with federal standards in order to avoid misleading the public like it did during the NYCHA crisis.

Council member Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx) criticized Health Department and City Hall assertions last year that there were just 19 cases of lead poisoning in public housing between 2012 and 2016.

It was later revealed that 758 cases were purposely excluded from the count because of different city and federal standards.

“The Health Department, by its own admission, has done the public an immense disservice by the confusion it has wrought on a subject where public anxieties run high,” Torres wrote in a letter to health officials obtained by The Post. “Had the truth been told early on, the controversy over lead reporting would have largely been avoided.”

The city was only counting cases where blood lead levels registered above 10 micrograms per deciliter, while the feds had set the recommended threshold at 5 micrograms since 2012.

In July 2017, HUD mandated that cities use the 5 microgram minimum in determining which apartments to investigate for lead hazards, but NYCHA didn’t meet that requirement until January 2018.

The city voluntarily adopted the same standard for lead paint probes in private buildings in July 2018, but without changing the formal definition of lead poisoning.

Health Department officials initially said they planned to propose the Board of Health update the Health Code — but only as far as officially lowering the investigative threshold to 5 micrograms.

They later told The Post they’ll seek to revise the definition of lead poisoning as well.