Fighting the ‘Silent Epidemic’ Hurting Our Children : With one in five California kids 6 and younger at high risk for lead poisoning, experts say it’s time for testing.

The toddler was teething and the window sill was just the right height.

He chomped down hard, grinding his sore gums against the cool, hard wood. The first taste of what would become a toxic dose of lead entered his bloodstream, then his brain.

Within three months, residue from paint first applied in 1949 had poisoned his organs. And today, an otherwise healthy child is 10 to 20 IQ points less intelligent than he should be.

Over the past two years, the number of young Los Angeles County children with poisonous levels of lead in their bodies has increased sixfold.

“We believe there are thousands--possibly tens of thousands of lead-poisoned children, but so far we’ve only been able to test 10% of them,” says Eleanor Long, chief of the county’s health department’s lead program. “This is a time bomb ready to explode.”

Long and other health officials cite the county’s stagnant economy and high percentage of pre-1950s’ housing as causes of what they’re calling “a silent epidemic.”

One in five California children 6 and younger is at high risk for lead poisoning, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Lead Safe California.

Those most likely to suffer the neurological damage of a lead build-up are urban, nonwhite and poor. But children in well-to-do families are also at risk, especially if their homes were built before 1950.

It was then that U.S. paint manufacturers began reducing the amount of lead in their product, and in the 1960s lead-free latex paint became popular.

Although lead-based paint was banned in Japan and most European countries in the 1920s for health reasons, it was not until 1978 that the U.S. Consumer Safety Product Commission banned lead paint for residential use in this country. More than three-fourths of California’s housing was built before 1978.

Only in the last decade or two have Americans learned to live without leaded fuels for their cars and sacrificed the luster of lead in their dishes. But still, the lead has not disappeared.

Although the remnants of old leaded paint are major agents of lead poisoning in children, there are many other lead hazards in Southern California.

Last year lead-laced printing on wrappers of candy imported from south of the border caused health officials to issue a statewide alarm. Candy sold in imported lead-glazed ceramic pots also has been implicated in cases of childhood poisoning.

“In L.A. County, we have a very diverse population and that means many different potential sources of lead--imported foods, cosmetics, and especially medicines that are traditional to other countries,” says Abel Martinez, the county’s health education coordinator.

Home remedies for various childhood ailments--though illegal in this country--still find their way into some Los Angeles homes. Among Asian Indians, county health officials say there is a threat of lead poisoning from Ghasard or Kandu; in the Hmong community, the threat may be from the home remedy Pay-loo-ah.

The yellow powder Greta and the orange compound Azarcon--both imported from Mexico and South America--also have been targeted by the health department as potentially lethal treatments for empacho, or stomachache. Greta and Azarcon, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says, are almost 100% lead.

An East Los Angeles woman knew her mother was giving the woman’s children Greta to “loosen what was stuck in their stomachs.” She did not know that the potion was dangerous.

When a routine blood test suggested that the woman’s 2-year-old was “lead burdened,” a team from the lead program discovered Greta in a medicine cabinet. “They told me it was poison,” recalls the woman. “I didn’t know it was so bad. None of us did.”

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Less dramatic exposures to lead--such as the day-to-day ingestion of microscopic dust in the home--are more common but equally insidious.

An El Monte girl suffered irreversible brain damage from exposure to old, flaking paint in her family’s poorly maintained apartment. The child had just celebrated her first birthday when a blood test revealed dangerous levels of lead in her system.

In the first California court judgment on the issue of a landlord’s responsibility for lead hazards, a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury in January ordered the owner of the girl’s apartment building to pay her $150,000.

County inspectors had traced the source of her lead poisoning to a window next to the family’s kitchen table. After the family’s lawsuit was settled, jurors said they were astonished that the landlord had repaired the girl’s apartment, but left 17 other units in the complex in similar condition with the same paint for up to two years.

And last week, the state attorney general’s office announced that seven manufacturers have agreed to eliminate lead from most faucets by 2000 to meet the state’s standard for lead content--the strictest in the United States.

“Even low levels of lead exposure decrease the IQ. So we are talking about a subtle difference in function, in behavior. It’s an easy diagnosis to miss,” says Dr. Paul Papanek, a toxic epidemiologist for the county Department of Health Services. “Such children may not be dead, but they’re certainly impaired.”

In the body, lead interferes with the work of enzymes--important proteins that catalyze many of the biochemical reactions of life. Lead is perhaps most damaging in the way it inhibits the production of heme for human hemoglobin.

Preschoolers are at special risk, says Papanek, because their organs are developing so quickly. And at that age, children are more likely to play in dirt, touch their hands to their mouths, nibble peeling paint and other “inedibles.”

As a preschooler, John Greenwood IV, now 10, almost died as a result of chewing and swallowing foam he found around the house--foam stuffing from his Ninja Turtle chair, foam from the seat of a sofa, the loamy padding beneath the living room carpet.

“I went to two different doctors, begging them to help him,” says John’s mother, Adrien Greenwood of Compton. “He was eating all different kinds of things that I thought might have had lead in it, but everybody said, ‘Oh well, it’s just a phase he’s going through.’ For almost two years, he didn’t gain any weight, just stayed at 35 pounds.”

By the time John’s ailment was properly diagnosed, it was almost too late. The level of lead in his blood had soared to 106 milligrams per deciliter. A level of 10--no more than an eyedropper of liquid in a gallon--is considered toxic by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It’s real important for parents who see their kids eating stuff they shouldn’t to go get a blood lead test--and I mean right now!” says Greenwood, whose son is still being treated for lead poisoning.

Health officers, including Papanek and Long, say all children from 6 months to 6 years old should have their blood routinely tested for lead.

“It’s a public health crisis we’re facing, and it’s only going to get worse,” Long says. “I’m afraid those lead paints from 20, 30 years ago are just now rising up into our environment and into these innocent children’s lives.”

The county has targeted pediatricians to push for widespread routine lead screening.

“My agenda is to have all young children tested,” Papanek says. “Whenever we do test, we find a surprising number of kids with elevated levels. Where we can do something about this public health threat, we should. All kids deserve maximum brain power.”