Five weeks ago I attended an overflow event at Virginia Tech that featured professor of environmental engineering, Marc Edwards, and his students–the Flint Water Study Research Team, and also LeeAnne Walters, the Flint mother who asked professor Edwards to come test the Flint River water. The event was full of emotion, especially for an engineering venue; however, this sentiment was not surprising because the participants and the audience knew and felt we were considering something that was seriously affecting the lives of many children.
The Congressional hearing the next week featuring Edwards and Walters was riveting as several of the offending officials in Michigan—and the federal government–were being named and called to task for their cover-ups and dereliction of duty. Despite how terrible this situation, the Flint Water Crisis is just the tip of the iceberg.
The good news is that serious attention is being paid to the problem of lead poisoning and the need to address the issue of old leaded pipes. The bad news, which is less well known, is that there are many more potential Flints out there, as the American Water Association estimates there are 6.5 Million lead pipes in use in the U.S., some already known to be poisoning the water and others being strong candidates to do so in the near future.
Even worse news is that lead poisoning of children across the country is happening all the time, substantially from lead paint. All houses built before 1975 are likely to contain lead, as up until that time lead was routinely included in paint. The Consumer Product Safety Commission finally banned lead paint in 1977. But problems with lead were known much earlier, causing it to be banned in France and many other countries prior to 1920. In fact, it was banned in Germany in the 1890s.
Thus, in addition to leaded water pipes, housing environments cause lead poisoning, which children get from exposure to lead in paint, soil, and household dust. They come in contact with these sources of lead during normal indoor and outdoor play. Soil in the vicinity of the home can also be contaminated by flaking exterior lead-based paint or from previous exhausts from leaded gasoline. In yards where soil is contaminated with lead, children may ingest it through regular hand-to-mouth activity during normal play. Also adults can track dust into homes, where regular child actions can result in exposure to lead.
The implications of lead poisoning are vast, as the neurological damage it causes can lead to such problems as learning disabilities and emotional disturbances. Lead is especially dangerous to children under seven years of age because this is the critical phase in the development of their neurological system. Lead poisoning can damage a young child’s developing brain and nervous system, leading to reduced IQ and behavioral disabilities. Consequently, lead poisoning is associated with poor school performance and delinquent behavior. Yet, lead is widespread in our living environment.
There are 24 million homes in the United States that contain deteriorated lead-based paint and elevated levels of lead-contaminated house dust. Four million of these are home to young children. The CDC estimates that currently over half a million children ages 1 to 5 have blood lead levels high enough to damage their health.
While we need to keep having the national discussion about the problem of leaded water pipes we need to expand our concerns to include what may be a greater problem, lead in the home environment of millions of children. Kay Colby and I will attempt to do just that at the upcoming national conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) in Cleveland, for which we have organized a session that will include a Flint community leader, a member of the Virginia Tech Flint Water Study team, and us. Kay, an AHCJ National Library of Medicine fellow, is health producer at WVIZ/PBS and formerly president of Public Health Television, Inc. She and I are longtime collaborators on video-based projects addressing African American and Hispanic health issues.
Lead poisoning does irreparable harm to children. It causes such problems as:
o Damage to the brain and nervous system
o Slowed growth and development
o Learning and behavior problems
o Hearing and speech problems
o Increased risk of attention deficit disorder
Lead poisoning is of special significance for African Americans as they are much more likely than white children to have elevated levels of lead in their blood. Since some of the principal sources of lead in the environment are flaking paint from old houses, auto emissions, and industrial sources, inner-city neighborhoods have higher rates of child lead poisoning than rural or suburban areas. The long history of discrimination and racial segregation forced the concentration of blacks into the worst housing in cities, thereby causing black children to be more at risk for lead poisoning than white children. They are nearly three times more likely than white children to have highly elevated blood-levels, the type of lead poisoning that produces the most damaging health outcomes.
Lead can have effects across generations as children can be lead poisoned before they are born. A woman can accumulate lead in her bones as youth or as an adult; and if she becomes pregnant this lead moves freely from the mother’s bones to the fetus in the womb.
We have known for some time that lead poisoning can lead to juvenile delinquent behavior, with such knowledge producing hypotheses about the relationship between lead poisoning and violent behavior in adulthood. Studies are showing strong correlations between lead poisoning and violent behavior. More studies need to be done to make sure of the lead causation.
Except for severely poisoned children, there is no medical treatment for lead poisoning. Drug therapy can reduce high levels of lead in the body, such as might occur when a child eats paint chips; however, this therapy cannot undo the harm caused to developing organs and systems. Consequently, the focus needs to be on preventing lead exposure. I will address lead poisoning prevention in a subsequent blog.