Weighing Health Risks From Lead

Weighing Health Risks From Lead

Clayton Cowl, an environmental medicine specialists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota explains lead poisoning and the health implications of the recall of nearly one million toys that may contain hazardous levels of lead paint.

What is lead poisoning?
When lead is ingested, the body will naturally take it out of an active form in the blood stream. The problem with children is it tends to be deposited into the brain and the nerves. The brain of a child develops rapidly, so as a result the results are magnified. Lead can cause cognitive and developmental abnormalties - certain types of learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder.

How much lead exposure does it take for these problems to occur?
They would be seen more commonly in children who are raised in environments, for example, there is lead-based paint on the walls and on the siding on the outside of the house, and they have repeatedly ingested it. This happens in some children with a condition called pica, where they like to chew on nonfood products.But as time has progressed studies have shown clinical effects of lead exposure at lower and lower levels. That makes it critical that environmental exposures are limited - not completely eliminated, because it may not be possible to competely eliminate all lead exposures.

What are the risks for a child who had one of the toys that was recalled?
Parents need to keep things in perspective. Simply having a single toy in the home does not pose an acute medical risk to the child - even if the child was to have ingested one small paint chip. But it is vitally important that all lead exposures are removed from any child's world as soon as possible.
If a parent is aware of a tainted toy that has been in their home, and the child has been playing with it, and the child is known to have a pica or some sort of developmental delay where they put things in their mouth a lot, those would be children that should be seen by their physician and a blood test considered. If the child doesn't have pica, the key is just removing the toy from the home.