In reviewing Herbert Needleman's “Lead Poisoning” it makes me think we have truly come a long way in science and the effects of lead exposure, particularly to young children. He describes the discovery of childhood lead poisoning in four stages, where the last two stages ultimately identified that exposure did not only show clinical symptoms, but it indeed has long-term deficits without clinical signs of toxicity. In 1979 there was a study in Massachusetts were primary students with elevated lead levels in their teeth, these children were significantly impaired on the IQ test, language processing, and reaction time under varying conditions of delay, a measure of attention. They were also reported to have increased bad behavior in the classroom. Sadly, these children went on to have more school failure, reading disabilities, lower standing in their final year of high school, and disturbances in fine motor function. Lead exposure is damaging to the potential of an individual’s capacity to be successful, which is why prevention is so important. Needleman, singles out leaded paint as the main source of lead poisoning, arguing that the removal of the paint would be over a 30-year period a cost of $33.7 billion in 1991, with a benefit of reduced health cost and increased income due to raised IQ at $61.7. This cost analysis is clear and yet, we are still exposed to lead, here and around the world. In 2010, Nigeria had an outbreak of lead poisoning among children under 5 years old where over 400 children died. This outbreak was due to a gold rush and mining practices, in this situation, many agencies were involved in the protection of the surrounding villages and safer mining practices were put into practice. Environmental health is a much-needed component of public health, without the knowledge and research behind the effects of the environmental exposures it would take us twice as long to find and implement prevention strategies to protect people’s health.
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