What is the danger of lead?

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there is no known safe blood lead level. Health effects associated with exposure to lead and lead compounds include, but are not limited to, neurotoxicity, developmental delays, hypertension, impaired hearing acuity, impaired hemoglobin synthesis, and male reproductive impairment. Lead bioaccumulates, and it is difficult to remove from blood and bones. Lead exposure in young children is of particular concern because children absorb lead more readily than adults. Children have a higher risk of exposure because of their more frequent hand-to-mouth behavior. Low levels of lead in a child’s bloodstream can interfere with growth and cause cognitive impairment, permanent hearing and visual impairment, and other damage to the brain and nervous system. The effects of long-term lead exposure or poisoning in children are well documented: Higher school failure rates and reductions in lifetime earnings due to permanent loss of intelligence and increased social pathologies.

In large doses, lead can cause blindness, brain damage, convulsions, and even death. Lead exposure before or during pregnancy can affect fetal development and cause miscarriages, as lead can pass from a pregnant woman’s bloodstream to the developing child. There is also some indication that lead exposure contributes to high blood pressure and reproductive and memory problems in adults. According to EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), by comparison to most other environmental toxicants, the degree of uncertainty about the health effects of lead is quite low and it appears that some effects, particularly changes in the levels of certain blood enzymes as well as changes in aspects of children’s neurobehavioral development, may occur at blood levels so low as to be essentially without a threshold.

In 1991, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) characterized lead poisoning as the ‘‘number one environmental threat to the health of children in the United States’’.

What are the dangers of Lead-Based Paint?

Through the 1940’s, paint manufacturers frequently used lead as a primary ingredient in many oil-based interior and exterior house paints. Usage gradually decreased through the 1950’s and 1960’s as titanium dioxide replaced lead and as latex paints became more widely available.

Paint that contains lead can pose a health threat through various routes of exposure. House dust is the most common exposure pathway through which children are exposed to lead paint hazards. Dust created during normal lead-based paint wear (especially around windows and doors) can create an invisible film over surfaces in a house. Children, particularly younger children, may also ingest lead-based paint chips from flaking walls, windows, and doors. Lead from exterior house paint can flake off or leach into the soil around the outside of a home, contaminating children’s play areas. Cleaning and renovation activities may actually increase the threat of lead-based paint exposure by dispersing lead dust particles in the air and over accessible household surfaces. In turn, both adults and children can receive hazardous exposures by inhaling the dust or by ingesting paint-dust during hand-to-mouth activities.

In its Preventing Lead Poisoning in Young Children; A Statement By the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, identified lead-based paint as the major source of high-dose lead poisoning in the United States. Although CPSC’s ban on high lead levels in residential paint was an important and necessary step in reducing the number of lead-poisoned children, millions of houses still contained old leaded paint.

What federal agencies regulate lead-based paint?

In the last 3 decades of the 20th century, various agencies of the Federal government took independent actions to address lead exposure. 

• CPSC:  In 1978, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) banned the use of paint containing more than 0.06% lead by weight on toys, furniture, and interior and exterior surfaces in housing and other buildings and structures used by consumers.

• OSHA:  Also in 1978, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued regulations to protect general industry workers from lead exposure. OSHA issued regulations in 1993 to protect construction workers including abatement workers, from lead exposure (Ref. 9).

• EPA:  In 1973, EPA issued regulations designed to gradually reduce the amount of lead in leaded gasoline. EPA lowered the maximum levels of lead permitted in public water systems in 1991.

• CDC:  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) set and lowered blood lead ‘‘levels of concern’’ several times, as new studies showed the impact of lead levels on children’s health. (The level of concern is the level where medical and environmental case management activities should be implemented.)

• HUD:  The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began to abate lead hazards in public housing that was being renovated or in structures occupied by a child with elevated blood lead levels.