Lead Pollution: A Failed System

Ebony was diagnosed with lead poisoning at the age of 2. Ebony's malady came from eating paint chips from a window sill in the apartment where her family lived in the Saint Louis University campus, as her mother Debbie Thomas-Smith later concluded. Doctors told Debbie and her father Zachary that Ebony would likely suffer from cognitive impairments for the rest of her life. Even so, she managed to earn a bachelor's degree and dual master's degrees in Business Management and Information Systems by midlife. Her career with the nation's largest campus bookstore operator spanned nearly 14 years, as she raised two sons, Clayton and Khamari, and parented two nieces, Mykinzi and Mareah, through their teens and into adulthood. She is now guiding two other teenagers in charting their own career paths.

Lead is

an invisible killer.

Lancet Public Health recently published a study that tracked more than 14,000 adults over a 20-year period. In the study, an increase of 37% in mortality from all causes and 70% increase in mortality from cardiovascular disease was found in people with a blood lead concentration at the 90th percentile, compared to those with a blood lead concentration at the 10th percentile.

According to the researchers, approximately 412,000 deaths in the US can be attributed to lead contamination per year. It is 10 times higher than figures previously reported by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The continuing influence

is the scariest thing,

especially for children.

Lead poisoning may cause many symptoms including abdominal pain, constipation, headaches, irritability, memory problems, infertility, and tingling in the hands and feet . In severe cases, anemia, seizures, coma, or death may happen.

The effects of long-term exposure to lead in childhood may cause damage to the brain and nervous system , leading to problems with future development, such as:

Slowed growth and development

Learning and behavioral problems

Hearing and speech problems

This can cause:

Lower IQ

Decreased ability to pay attention

Underperformance in school

We are still

living in danger.

However, despite the ongoing fight against lead, high blood lead rates continue to affect children. An exploration of blood testing data revealed that areas of significant lead exposure risk remain even throughout America’s largest and richest city.

Although lead poisoning has nearly been eliminated in many neighborhoods, the research identified 69 New York City census tracts where at least 10% of young children screened over an 11-year period, from 2005 to 2015, had elevated levels of lead. That is twice the rate found across Flint, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 5 percent of children's tests to be high during the peak of the notorious water contamination crisis in 2014 and 2015.

Residential lead paint was outlawed in New York in 1960, 18 years before a national ban was enacted. In 2004, a housing law called for the "elimination" of childhood lead poisoning within six years. The city provides free lead testing in housing, promises to fix hazards and charge landlords when necessary, and has seen childhood exposure rates decline year after year.

However, inspectors did not visit the Brooklyn apartment Barbara Ellis lived in until after her twin daughters tested high for lead three years in a row, she said. Lead paint was found peeling from windows and doors. The girls will need speech and occupational therapy to recover their developmental delays, common among lead-exposed children.

In 2019, the Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic at the Washington University School of Law provided a report to the community. Citing figures from 2016, researchers reported that Black children were “ 2.4 times more likely than white children to test positive for lead in their blood and account for more than 70 percent of children found to suffer from lead poisoning.”

University of Pennsylvania’s researcher Claudia López Lloreda’s report reveals that children living in poverty suffer greater cognitive and physical effects from lead exposure than children from richer families, even if they live in the same area. Lead poisoning hits low-income children harder than their affluent neighbors.

The best way to eliminate lead poisoning is regular testing. This allows early detection of symptoms of high blood lead and prompt treatment to prevent the subsequent effects. However, lood lead tests are expensive, usually costing around $30 to $100. This stops some families with low-income from getting their children tested for blood lead. But it is these families that are more likely to have high blood lead levels children because they often live in old houses, public housing or in districts with serious pollution.

And usually highly educated people have higher consciousness of prevention of lead poisoning. The low class and income families have no awareness and no energy to care for the children's blood lead level, until their children have shown the corresponding symptoms - usually means that lead has already been very deeply into their bodies - and will suffer in the whole life.

The right thing we should do is to popularize the blood lead testing to every family, and only by reducing the cost of blood lead testing can it be made widely available so that more families in need can get their children tested. So we call on testing institutions to provide affordable blood lead tests , and we also call on public interest organizations to sponsor the tests. At the same time, efforts are under way to make blood lead testing fully covered by health insurance. Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller said, medical tests for lead exposure must be covered fully by health insurance as a preventative service for children.

Reference

https://beforefergusonbeyondferguson.org/making-it-ebony-smith-thomas-was-the-victim-of-lead-poisoning-as-a-toddler-now-the-mother-of-two-sons-is-fighting-for-her-life/

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/health/lead-exposure-cardiovascular-disease-study/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poisoning-and-health

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-lead-newyork/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lead-new-york-specialreport-idUSKBN1DE1GC

https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/basic-information-about-lead-drinking-water

Picture Credits

https://healix.com/reports/lead-poisoning-medical-briefing/

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/making-it-ebony-smith-thomas-was-victim-lead-poisoning-toddler-now-mother-two-sons-fighting

http://www.blackbottomarchives.com/allaboutdetroit/2016/1/19/the-flint-water-crisis-is-a-result-of-pure-neglect

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2018/07/20/book-review-poisoned-city-anna-clark-flint-water-crisis-michigan/797604002/

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/flint-water-crisis/cdc-confirms-lead-levels-shot-flint-kids-after-water-switch-n598496

https://newrepublic.com/article/147066/flints-water-crisis-damage-kids-brains

https://nypost.com/2019/07/08/nychas-delays-caused-my-lead-poisoned-son-to-get-sicker/

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/03/a-crisis-on-our-hands-san-joses-reid-hillview-airport-exposes-children-to-high-lead-levels-study-finds/

https://sanjosespotlight.com/study-san-jose-children-near-reid-hillview-airport-exposed-to-high-lead-levels/

https://patch.com/california/campbell/san-jose-students-survey-residents-reid-hillview-airport-closure

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/08/18/reid-hillview-airport-san-jose-lead-levels-closing/

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/24/481090373/are-your-pipes-made-of-lead-heres-a-quick-way-to-find-out

Dataset Source

https://data.world/healthdatany/rkyy-fsv9

https://data.world/healthdatany/4n6n-zu56

https://data.world/city-of-ny/tnry-kwh5

EPA

Uchicago Urban Lab

WE ACT

WHO