9.4 Heavy Metals

An environmental health response to a severe outbreak of childhood lead poisoning in NigeriaCasey Bartrem & Lead Poisoning

-Lead poisoning goes back to centuries ago where we used to find lead in paint and even vehicles and affected thousands of people that had exposure to them in their everyday life such as workers and even win drinkers.  A research conducted on 20 children and their exposure to lead showed that those 19 that did survive had long-term deficits such as in IQ score, attention, and language. Lead has the overall effect on brain development and affects our brain edema and hemorrhage if the dose reaches higher levels. Similar studies were done on monkeys who also showed impaired ability to learn and with rodents who showed deficits in learning. It is scary and real to find that something that was so common would even become such a universal chemical that we can find in almost anything around us. By following the recommendations we found in the previous post, we can help prevent our own families risk to being exposed. 

The article also mentions lead poisoning in adults and how it may affect our central nervous system, kidneys, and blood pressure. Hypertension has been associated with acute lead poisoning and renal failure as well it is scary to think we may still be affected by this even now. Lead or toxicity affects children more than ever before and was discovered and described in 1914. Their overall sensitivity to lead is more than adults due to their hand to mouth activity. It is scary to think as parents that our children may still be affected by our everyday items at home if we are not careful.

In the 1980’s when lead was removed from the gas, resulting in better outcomes and lower blood lead levels, however, there is still the danger from the lead we find still today in the paint. Although it was banned in 1971, many houses that were built during that time still contain this chemical; I will personally make sure any future home I purchase does not contain lead to prevent chemical exposure. 

The outbreak in Nigerian villages was due to children having lead poisoning and resulted in hundreds of deaths. The mining areas that contained the lead were then removed, the environmental response was done by local governments and after the four-year intervention helps approximately 2400 children received treatment for blood lead levels help decline the levels significantly. This outbreak was a horrible thing to happen and bring awareness to an important issue at this village, they needed to prevent this from happening again and was a relieve for children and families. 

Bartrem, C., Tirima, S., Lindern, I. V., & Braun, M. V. (2015). An environmental health response to a severe outbreak of childhood lead poisoning in Nigeria. European Journal of Public Health, 25(Suppl_3). doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckv167.003

Needleman, H. (2004). Lead Poisoning. Annual Review of Medicine, 55(1), 209-222. doi:10.1146/annurev.med.55.091902.103653