Blood Lead Level Screening Tools

Blood Lead Level Screening Tools

In the 21st century, there is no question about it - lead is here and it is pervasive. The reasons are manifold and range from industrial pollution, to consumer demand for lead-based products, to protracted political campaigns by the LIA and other industry defenders. Almost every city in the United States has a lead problem, and specific data is still slowly being created across the country (Rosner, 757). We are still depressingly behind in creating safety protocols and preventing lead exposure “there is no standard national database that reliably allows officials to identify specific children at risk” (Rosner, 757). Federal government efforts to address lead through the Superfund program provide significant funds to different sites across the nation including Omaha, but federal motivation has been historically insignificant; in fact, former EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch, in office from 1981 to 1983, who was in charge of the superfund sites resigned during an “investigation of possible misuse of $1.6 billion in superfund money” (Markowitz, Rosner 88). Under her influence the EPA stopped many of its practices and pushed more of its responsibilities to the states.
Public health efforts on the state and local level also face political limitations. Lead screenings, which test children’s blood lead levels and help us locate areas that are at a higher risk of exposure, are cost prohibitive and require institutional compliance making them harder to accomplish in poorer rural areas. In Omaha specifically there are efforts to mandate universal yearly lead screenings for children up to the age of three “with high-risk children being tested through age six” (Wilken, 2). In a survey of Douglas county screening data, it was found that “Hispanics [are] more likely to have documented [blood lead levels] than African Americans or Caucasians (91%, 74% and 68% respectively)” (Wilken, 2). This information is another reminder of the racial component of the lead crisis, a reminder of the ‘white flight’ that left the poor inner city with old houses and leaded paint, of the manufacturing plants that were within sight of low-income housing, and of the inability of minorities to escape these environmental hazards.
Lead screenings cannot be the only approach either. Children are not suddenly free from lead exposure at the age of six. They are virtually unprotected from lead exposure after that age because their blood lead levels are unknown. If they were screened when they were young, passed, and moved to an old house where they get more contact with lead, they would still be affected. We now know “children with Blood Lead Levels less than 10 micrograms/deciliter suffer intellectual impairment” suggesting that there is not a safe amount of lead for the human body (Wilken, 1).
Unfortunately, the issue with our lead treatment system is the same as it was back in the sixties when Clair Patterson took on the lead industry, we do not do enough to clean up our urban environments. Because the majority of lead exposure comes from environmental lead, we are just going to continue to see the effects of lead until we actually do something to stop it. We need to make sure that all the lead piping our water flows through gets removed, we need to actually address Superfund sites and remove the dirt that is embedded with lead. Most of all we need an actual systematic way to remove lead from all of our cities, we have a governing body that knows the effects of lead now we need it to be committed to protecting us from it. The lead crisis is a nationwide issue, we need an appropriately sized agent to deal with it.

David McGuire

Meghan Thornton