Health and Safety - Lead Poisoning

Lead exposure comes primarily from leaded paints that have worn off or been scraped from older homes. Lead is also found in lead plumbing and emitted by factory smokestacks. Because they have smaller bodies and are growing, children suffer the effects of lead exposure more acutely than adults do. Lead poisoning causes nervous system disorders, reduction in intelligence, fatigue, inhibited infant growth, and hearing loss. Toxic levels of lead in a parent can also affect unborn children.

According to the CDC fact sheet "About Childhood Lead Poisoning," in 2000 approximately 434,000 children in the United States between the ages of one and five, or about 2.2% of all children in that age group, had blood lead levels greater than the CDC's recommended level of ten micrograms per deciliter of blood. This number has dropped substantially from 1976 to 1980, when 88.2% of children under age five showed high blood lead levels. Although children from all social and economic levels can be affected by lead poisoning, children in families with low incomes, those who live in older, deteriorated housing, and African-American and Hispanic children are at higher risk. Paint produced prior to 1978 frequently contained lead, so federal legislation now requires owners to disclose any information they may have about lead-based paint before renting or selling a home built earlier than 1978.