Look What’s Poisoning the Children : Lead: The problem is serious and widespread, but preventable. Without testing, we’ll pay in lost learning ability, opportunities and earnings.
People can get so excited about exotic and theoretical problems--what I call the “one-in-a-million” hazards--that I sometimes feel frustrated trying to focus attention on a very clear and common environmental poison known to affect the development of millions of our children: lead.
Most people know that lead, at high levels, poisons people, causing coma, convulsions and sometimes death. But few are concerned about what research shows to be a clear, if subtle, danger that even at low levels is handicapping up to 4 million American toddlers. In fact, tests show that lead affects the health of developing fetuses and children at even commonly found exposure levels.
Thirty years ago, we had no strong evidence of important damage from lead at levels well below those that cause clear and overt symptoms--convulsions, anemia and kidney damage. But a pioneering study in 1979 of 2,000 children showed that those with modestly elevated lead levels (but no overt symptoms of lead poisoning) averaged four points lower in IQ than children with lower lead levels. While an individual can vary three or four IQ points between tests, in a larger population group such a shift would increase the number of kids with an IQ below 70--and thus likely to need special help--by three or four times.
Research conducted in the 1980s, and recently reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control, confirmed not only the effect of lead on our children in lost intelligence but also in shortened attention spans, poorer hearing and reduced reading and learning ability.
However, getting the lead out is not easy or cheap. It is in car batteries, some water-distribution systems, some craft pottery, some food cans, a little in gasoline and, most seriously, in the flakes and dust from homes and buildings still covered with lead paint. (You can sand the paint on a house you’re remodeling and, if you’re not careful, poison your whole family.)
Childhood lead poisoning is one of the most common pediatric health problems in this country and, as Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan says, is the biggest environmental hazard affecting our children’s health.
Today, 74% of private, occupied housing units built before 1980 contain lead-based paint, which wasn’t banned completely until 1978. Pre-1950 homes typically have lead paint throughout.
This paint is of particular concern on window frames and sills because opening and closing the windows abrade the paint into dust that an exploring toddler will get on his or her hands--hands that go straight into their mouths.
Some, of course, look at the cost--to parents, governments and landlords--of testing kids and removing lead “hot spots” from the environment, and throw up their hands. But the studies point to the far greater costs to society and our children of not acting: lost learning ability, lost opportunities and lost productivity and earnings.
Our new federal policy focuses priority attention and medical intervention on about 250,000 children with higher blood levels of lead--25 micrograms (millionths of a gram) per tenth-liter of blood--but says that when numerous children in a community are found with levels of even 10 micrograms, that should trigger lead prevention efforts in that community.
We recommend that doctors and parents make sure that virtually every crawling or toddling child is screened for lead, at least once, unless they live in a community with no history of lead exposure. The CDC is working on a better test to make screening easier and cheaper.
Different problems will be found in households in different communities. Where the lead content of water exceeds the drinking water standard, the cold-water tap should be fully flushed every morning and only then collected for drinking, cooking and making formula. Where housing is older, parents must be sure that children’s hands and faces are washed before meals. Toys and pacifiers should be washed frequently.
The soil immediately adjacent to an older home’s exterior walls (or near a major highway) may be contaminated, so adults should discourage children from playing in this dirt. If a child has to eat a peck of dirt before it grows up, as many grandmothers used to say, don’t let it be this kind of lead-contaminated dirt or dust. Bushes, grass and ground covers help.
In addition, the Public Health Service advises:
--Don’t store food (juices, for example) in open cans, particularly if the cans are imported.
--Don’t use pottery or ceramic ware bought along the road during your travels to store or serve food. Just use them for decoration. (Commercially made dishes should be of less concern because of regulation of their lead glazes by the Food and Drug Administration. Some dishware, however, has had to be recalled.)
--Make sure your child isn’t poisoned by your hobby: painting with artists’ oils, soldering stained glass, casting ammunition or making fishing weights or toy soldiers.
--Don’t burn painted wood in your fireplace or stove.
--Don’t give your child folk medicines such as greta, azarcon and alarcon. Lead compounds are tragically used as major ingredients in “traditional” medications of Latin America, the Arab cultures, the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent and China.
--Do make sure that your child has regular meals, because lead is more easily absorbed on an empty stomach. Make sure the child’s diet contains adequate iron and calcium, which are easily provided in cooked greens, beans and milk products.
Lead poisoning is entirely preventable. Doctors, homeowners and landlords, parents, communities and state governments all have a role to play--as does the federal government. We’ve got to get their attention and convince them that this is a problem that’s real.
