“A Silent Epidemic”

 

 

One of the more successful public health interventions in recent decades has been in reducing the incidence of lead poisoning in children. It took 25 years before the Environmental Protection Agency finally phased out leaded gasoline in 1996. In 1978, lead was banned as an additive in house paints. And communities around the country, including in Allegheny County, have started to tackle the problem of lead in drinking water by replacing old plumbing fixtures and lead service lines connecting homes to main water lines.

Unfortunately, early exposure to lead is still a problem in the United States, especially for children who grow up in old housing units with chipping paint and paint dust, which remains the most common type of childhood exposure. In a large study published last month in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers found that lead remains a threat to children’s health and well-being. Emma Ockerman sums up the stunning findings without mincing words:

More than half of young American children who underwent lead testing had detectable levels of the poisonous metal in their blood, according to a massive study of more than a million kids living in the world’s richest country.

 

More than 1.1 million children under the age of six had lead testing between October 2018 and February 2020. 51% of children had detectable levels of lead in their blood; 2% had elevated levels above the EPA’s action threshold of 5 micrograms per deciliter.

It is the evidence-based consensus of medical toxicologists and pediatricians everywhere that there is no safe level of lead in a child’s bloodstream. We reviewed the frightening impacts of lead poisoning in children on The PediaBlog in 2016:

The injuries caused by lead in a developing child’s brain may be profound, or they may be subtle, but they are always permanent.We know that brain damage from lead causes lower IQ’s and other cognitive delays, learning disabilities, hearing impairments, difficulties with attention and concentration (ADHD), decreased academic achievement, and anti-social and other behavioral problems. All these effects have life-long consequences for children when they become adults, and for the rest of society.

Children experience other health effects when they are poisoned with lead. Kidney damage and anemia, short stature and pubertal delays, peripheral nerve damage and muscle weakness all can result in chronic and often painful, lifelong sickness and disability, and early death.

 

In the U.S., high blood lead levels are correlated with race, economic status, and housing. For example, the study revealed:

• 58% of Black children had detectable levels of lead in their blood compared to 49% of White children.

• Elevated blood lead levels were found in 3% of kids living in Black neighborhoods, 2% of kids from White neighborhoods, and 1% in those from Hispanic neighborhoods.

• 60% of children living below the poverty line had detectable lead levels vs. 39% of children not living in poverty.

• Children living in high poverty communities were nearly three times more likely to have elevated blood lead levels compared to kids from areas with the lowest levels of poverty.

• 57% of children living in pre-1950s housing had detectable lead levels vs. 43% who lived in newer housing.

• Six states had elevated blood levels more than double the 2% nationwide rate — Nebraska (6%), Ohio (5%), Pennsylvania (5%), Missouri (5%), Michigan (5%) and Wisconsin (4%).

 

In an editorial accompanying the study, the authors write that it’s time to end the “silent epidemic” of lead poisoning in America:

“These findings confirm that we still have a long way to go to end childhood lead poisoning in the United States,” Landrigan and Bellinger wrote. “They reconfirm the unacceptable presence of stark disparities in children’s lead exposure by race, ethnicity, income, and zip code — many of them the cruel legacy of decades of structural racism — a legacy that falls most harshly on the children and families in our society with the fewest resources.”

 

This week is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. We will review more facts about lead poisoning tomorrow on The PediaBlog, and find ways to reduce exposure in childhood.

 

source http://www.thepediablog.com/2021/10/25/a-silent-epidemic/