The Change Mariner

Looking Outside for Lead Danger

NYT

... But thousands of children tested each year still have lead levels in their blood high enough to raise health concerns.

At least part of the reason, city health officials and other experts say, may be the broader environment of the city itself: lead that is in the soil, on the streets and underneath dozens of miles of elevated subway, where the steel support structures were painted for decades with lead-based paint.

Peeling and chipping indoor lead paint is almost certainly the prime threat to small children, who can eat the paint or breathe its dust, health experts agree.

The existence of outdoor lead, they say, is not surprising in an old urban environment, nor should it be a cause for immediate alarm; any threat to children from outdoor lead can often be reduced by simple measures like having them wash their hands after they have played outside or making them take their shoes off indoors.

But these other environmental sources are nonetheless still out there; some researchers liken them to a hangover from the 20th century's long binge with lead, once ubiquitous in everything from toys and food to gasoline and especially paint. As evidence mounts that lead can affect children at much smaller concentrations than doctors had previously thought, some researchers and politicians say they are coming to believe that the final chapter of lead's toxic legacy may prove much harder to write than it once seemed.

Posted by Norm M. Wada at November 2, 2003 12:42 PM | TrackBack
Related Categories: Area - Environment