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Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

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Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#71

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

londons_explore wrote: post #19
wallawe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another source of lead, unfortunately, is in children's toys. Yeah this was going to be my question, is where is the lead coming from? Water, toys, what else? Having a 4 week old, seeing this concerns me so I'd love to do what I can to avoid it.

Avoid anything over 50 years old. Old stuff has lead, but also has a bunch of other things that are of dubious health effects. But new stuff contains more volatiles, more fluorinated plastics, and a far wider array of newish chemicals we don't yet have good data on (nanoparticles etc.) Overall, I'd say that unless you have a lifetime to test and research everything, it probably isn't worth making any lifestyle choice…

Or avoid anything that wasn't made the same way 400 years ago. ;-)

Except pewter. Avoid that.

But like -- wood, cast iron, earthenware, unleaded glass, natural fibers (cotton, linen, hemp), vegetable dyes: I don't see how you go wrong with those.

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#73

Post by s0rce »

verst wrote: post #67
cobookman wrote: post #46

It's shameful the EPA still hasn't banned leaded aviation fuel.

And most pilot will have touched this fuel quite a bit - for example when checking a single engine propeller plane during preflight we sump the fuel tanks. There is always some fuel that sprays onto my hands then. I wonder how much lead this exposes me to. (I'm working on a private pilot license in a Cessna 172)

If you are particularly concerned (could be justified) you could get a small aircraft with a diesel engine, don't seem super common but might be increasing.

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#74

Post by dwohnitmok »

djoldman wrote: post #44

How about Chicago: > The biggest reason is that essentially Chicago and other cities around Illinois required the use of lead service lines all the way until 1986, long after it was recognized that lead was poisonous and other cities had stopped using it. A decade after other cities had stopped using it Chicago and other cities in Illinois were not only using it but requiring the use of lead long after everybody else…

Interestingly enough, of all the environmental hazards caused by large corporations, here's a rare example of one where this was primarily caused by a union, which while not opposed to the overall removal of lead, demanded the use of pipes which required specialized knowledge to install, which precluded non-brazed copper and plastic pipes used elsewhere in the nation, and effectively made lead pipes the only viable option.

On the surface, finally after a decade-long fight, the plumber's union, despite objections by its union spokespeople, said in 1986 it would defer to the city council after the matter was decided at the federal level, but in that decade, long after other cities had banned lead pipes, lead pipes were still a required part of Chicago building code.

https://www.npr.org/local/309/2020/09/11/911903152/here-s-ma...

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#75

Post by prepend »

The important question is how many kids have 5 micrograms of lead per decaliter of blood [0]. This is the reference blood lead level and much more useful for tracking progress (or decline).

I’m surprised that the article sticks with the “no lead is good” rather than the public health level.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/blood-lead-levels.h...

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#76

Post by zoomablemind »

wallawe wrote: post #3
fullstop wrote: post #2

My house was built in the 70s and I've tested surfaces over the years and have not found any lead paint yet. Another source of lead, unfortunately, is in children's toys.

> Another source of lead, unfortunately, is in children's toys. Yeah this was going to be my question, is where is the lead coming from? Water, toys, what else? Having a 4 week old, seeing this concerns me so I'd love to do what I can to avoid it.

In the course of regular pediatric visits the doctor should at some point check the blood for lead early on. Not on every visit, of course, they have a schedule for the blood work.

As for the concerns, if there're reasons, doctor recommened us to check the water first. There may also be free test kits from the city.

Also, out of caution, we were running the water off for some time before filling pots and doing washes, esp. in the morning.

Dust wise, there's no easy solution. The wet cleaning, mopping the floors regularly and maintaining reasonable humidity indoors would help keep dust down... but babies love to crawl.

Perhaps being outdoors more may be an option, unless it's even more polluted.

If breastfed, mama's health is equally cruicial!

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#77

Post by kasey_junk »

roland35 wrote: post #15

My wife and I are particularly concerned about lead, especially since there is no way to really cure lead poisoning. Any house built before the 1980s could have lead in it, with varying degrees of concern for children. Around the home here is what we found are sources of lead to worry about (or not): - Paint: lead was banned in paint in 1979, but lead was used less and less even before the cutoff date. Paint is espec…

For plumbing specifically you _also_ have to worry about every link in the chain from your house to the water source. Perhaps non-intuitively just knowing if there are lead pipes because they can develop a protective sediment layer that prevents the lead from touching the water.

Anecdotally, we had a major city water line project in our neighborhood that _raised_ our lead levels because it disturbed that sediment protection.

The only real solution is testing and filtering at point of use. But even filtering is hard because most water filters sold are for flavor not for lead.

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#78

Post by krrrh »

djoldman wrote: post #44

How about Chicago: > The biggest reason is that essentially Chicago and other cities around Illinois required the use of lead service lines all the way until 1986, long after it was recognized that lead was poisonous and other cities had stopped using it. A decade after other cities had stopped using it Chicago and other cities in Illinois were not only using it but requiring the use of lead long after everybody else…

It seems like the lead blood level indicator has been removed from this site, but a friend showed me this map of homicide rates vs one with lead levels from 18 years prior[0] and there was a pretty strong correlation.

Obviously there are confounders, but Kevin Drum’s decade old article positing that lead was a major contributor to the crime wave and subsequent reduction is pretty compelling. [1]

EDIT: aside, but maybe one of the most depressing things I’ve ever learned is the high levels of lead in the ink used to wrap various Mexican candy. [2] and this 2014 article [3] on lead levels in Mexican kids where the mean levels exceed the upper acceptable level in the US.

There are few things that cause me more distress than the failure to comprehensively tackle this issue worldwide.

[0] https://chicagohealthatlas.org/indicators/lead-poisoning

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...

[2] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2004-05-14-04051...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25459328/

“Our results indicate that more than 15% of the population will experience a decrement of more than 5 IQ points from lead exposure. The analysis also leads us to believe that lead is responsible for 820,000 disability-adjusted life-years for lead-induced mild mental retardation for children aged 0 to 4 years.”

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#79

Post by eigenhombre »

djoldman wrote: post #44

How about Chicago: > The biggest reason is that essentially Chicago and other cities around Illinois required the use of lead service lines all the way until 1986, long after it was recognized that lead was poisonous and other cities had stopped using it. A decade after other cities had stopped using it Chicago and other cities in Illinois were not only using it but requiring the use of lead long after everybody else…

A couple years ago we had a pipe in our courtyard, buried at about 1.5m depth, burst in the middle of a cold spell. Suddenly an icy river appeared in the middle of our yard. Fixing it took a crew of four guys several hours to manually dig a grave-sized pit and splice out the bad section (my hat is still off to them -- it was well below freezing when it happened).

I still have the 7" (18cm) section of pipe they removed -- it's an impressively heavy, several pounds at least. There is an absolutely seriously huge amount of lead in just about everyone's yards here in Chicago, in the form of pipes.

What's less clear is how much of that lead winds up in bodies, to what resulting health impact. People need help making judgements about relative risk -- sadly, the article is not helpful in that regard.

Re: Half of American kids have lead in their blood, doctors say

#80

Post by scrooched_moose »

roland35 wrote: post #15

My wife and I are particularly concerned about lead, especially since there is no way to really cure lead poisoning. Any house built before the 1980s could have lead in it, with varying degrees of concern for children. Around the home here is what we found are sources of lead to worry about (or not): - Paint: lead was banned in paint in 1979, but lead was used less and less even before the cutoff date. Paint is espec…

Worth adding that lead test kits are pretty cheap at any big box store and easy to use:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-LeadCheck-Instant-Lead-Test-S... (this actually seems expensive, I'm used to closer to $2-3 per stick)

We have an early 20th century house and run them over anything we're about to demo. So far we've been lucky, so likely a later renovation removed most of the lead that would have been there.

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