children's environmental health

My favorite way to capture students’ attention about lead poisoning is to tell them about Dr. Herbert Needleman and his use of children’s baby teeth. In the late 1960's, Needleman recruited school teachers in Chelsea and Somerville, MA to collect their young students’ deciduous teeth when they fell out. It was a non-invasive way----no needlesticks, no bone biopsies---to get data on lead burden in children. Needleman’s team analyzed the teeth for lead which helped them establish a population distribution of tooth lead levels. (It did not exist up to that time.)  In 1972, he published the…

Right now, according to public health officials, about half a million U.S. kids have blood lead levels that could harm their health. However, new research finds many more children — hundreds of thousands more — are likely going unidentified. In a study published last week in Pediatrics, researchers estimated that while 1.2 million cases of elevated blood lead levels (EBLL) likely occurred between 1999 and 2010, only 607,000 were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That data gap not only means kids are likely going without needed treatment and services, but that public…

From my hometown of Detroit, there's more grim news.  The story that made today's headline comes from the State-authorized financial review team.  They unanimously concluded that a fiscal emergency exists in Detroit.  The city, with a population of about 700,000 residents, has $14 billion in long-term debt and a projected $100 million budget shortfall for this year.  The story that didn't get a headline, but is equally important for the city's future, concerns the effects of lead poisoning on academic achievement among Detroit's school children.  A newly published study in the American…