Lead

Even though the dangers of lead have been known for decades, it is the first thing to worry about.  Cutting-edge research shows that our children’s brains are much more sensitive to this metal than we previously thought.  Widely used for much of the twentieth century in gas and paint, lead is still pervasive.  It is my recommendation that if you live in a house built before the 1978 ban on lead paint, get your children tested for lead and be extremely cautious when doing even the simplest renovations on your home.

– The Toxic Sandbox (2007) by Libby McDonald; page 15

The CDC says that one-quarter of US children are exposed to lead in their own homes; and with 80% of American houses built before the 1978 ban on lead paint, the threat of exposure will not go away for a long time.

– The Toxic Sandbox (2007) by Libby McDonald; page 16

There is mounting evidence that there is no safe threshold for lead in the body — evidence that conflicts sharply with the CDC’s position that up to ten micrograms per deciliter is acceptable.

– The Toxic Sandbox (2007) by Libby McDonald; page 16

Exposure to lead in early childhood causes lifelong impairments for which there are no simple treatments.

– The Toxic Sandbox (2007) by Libby McDonald; page 7

Lead in children is associated with:

• A loss of IQ points
• Reading problems
• Failure to grow
• Hearing loss
• Speech deficits
• Attention deficits
• Antisocial behavior
• Aggressive behavior
• Delinquency and criminal behavior

– The Toxic Sandbox (2007) by Libby McDonald; page 16

It is important to note that all brain damage caused by lead has a lag effect.  Often with lead, you will not see the deficits until a child is six or seven.  Or even, at times, as late as his or her early teen years.  What this means is that if a child has a high lead count at one or two, everything may appear to be fine until age six or seven, when the region of the damaged brain actually begins to develop.

– The Toxic Sandbox (2007) by Libby McDonald; page 24

“Why are children particularly vulnerable to lead?”

The body has a built-in mechanism for protecting the brain from poisonous substances, called the blood-brain barrier (BBB).  Unfortunately, lead befuddles the BBB by masquerading as calcium, which crosses the barrier easily.  Because babies’ and toddlers’ brains crave calcium in their effort to develop, until children are around six years old they can absorb three to four times more lead than an adult.  And if a child has a calcium deficiency it makes matters worse: his or her developing body will grab on to this calcium look-alike, accelerating the uptake of lead.  During this process, of course, children’s brains are rapidly developing and are particularly sensitive to the effects of lead.

– The Toxic Sandbox (2007) by Libby McDonald; page 19

“Can my unborn baby be exposed to lead?”

Lead also passes through the umbilical cord to our unborn babies.  Although most women in this country have low lead counts, even grown ups can be seriously exposed to lead by, say, living through the renovation of an old house or drinking water that has traveled through lead pipes.  If you live in a home built before 1978, when lead was finally banned, you may want to request a lead test before becoming pregnant.

However, there is another, more concerning way lead can enter a mother’s bloodstream.  Half of the lead ingested or inhaled when we were girls gets stored in our bones for up to thirty years.  Then during pregnancy and lactation when our bodes require additional calcium, the lead from our bones activates and enters our bloodstream.  A calcium supplement during pregnancy may prevent the transfer of lead to our unborn babies.

– The Toxic Sandbox (2007) by Libby McDonald; pages 20 -21

Early lead exposure stored in bones activates during pregnancy.

The chemical fingerprint of lead in people living in Australia is actually different from that found in people of other countries.  For this reason, Dr. Brian Gulson of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, was able to analyze the composition of lead in immigrants’ blood and use the distinction between outside lead and Australian lead as a data point for determining lead exposure prior to arrival in the country.  He learned that the lead that mobilized from their bones into their bloodstream during pregnancy was the lead women ingested early in their lives, before they came to Australia.  The amount released during the postpartum period measured anywhere between 0.9 and 10.1 micrograms per deciliter.  In other words, pregnancy doubled the lead levels in the blood of women who participated in the study.  The results from this study are alarming because they show that lead stored in a mother’s bones when she was a girl can actually pass to her baby in utero.

– The Toxic Sandbox (2007) by Libby McDonald; page 21