‘We’re losing IQ points’: the lead poisoning crisis unfolding among US children

 

I suggest reading the whole article.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/08/lead-poisoning-crisis-us-children

 

Erin McCormick in Rhode Island and Eric Lutz
Wed 8 Dec 2021 05.00 ESTTurokk Dow is one of about 87,000 young children who are diagnosed with lead poisoning in the US each year, more than three decades after the neurotoxin was banned as an ingredient in paint, gasoline and water pipes. Today, lead lingers in houses and apartments, yards and water lines, and wherever states and communities ramp up testing, it becomes clear that the nation’s lead problem is worse than we realized, experts say.

A study published in JAMA Pediatrics this fall suggested that more than half of all US children have detectable levels of lead in their blood – and that elevated blood lead levels were closely associated with race, poverty and living in older housing. Black children are particularly at risk.

“Most American children are exposed to lead, a substance that is not safe at any level,” said co-author Dr Harvey Kaufman, a senior medical director at Quest Diagnostics, which led the study. According to the CDC, “[e]ven low levels of lead in blood have been shown to negatively affect a child’s intelligence, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement.”

“This is an entire United States issue,” Kaufman said. “It really is everywhere.”

The nation’s programs to detect lead before it poisons children and to identify those who have been exposed are astoundingly slipshod.

“We literally are using the blood of our children as detectors of environmental contamination,” said Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who helped to expose the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

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 “As a society, we’re losing IQ points due to lead exposure,” said Tom Neltner of the Environmental Defense Fund. “In an individual child, you are not going to see it. But statistically we see the child is more likely to have behavior problems, to have learning problems, to have lower income. Other studies indicate that they’re more likely to be arrested, more likely to commit violent behavior – all the things we really don’t want in the next generation.”

Children all across the nation are at risk. Lead water pipes are still found in millions of homes in all 50 states, a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found.

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A 2017 Pew Charitable Trust study found that taking measures to prevent lead exposure for children could provide huge economic benefits to society – up to $84bn a year in increased earnings and savings.

And yet, poorer communities may lack the funding necessary to take on such prevention and remediation programs. While President Biden has made environmental justice a pillar of his administration, the final version of the infrastructure bill contains $15bn for removal of lead water pipes – much less than the $45bn originally proposed.

[Not President Biden's fault.]

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