Lead And Your Kids

Children are most likely to get lead poisoning between the ages of 6 months and 6 years, when lead dust from carpeting, toys or the floor is more likely to find its way into their mouths. (An adult can tolerate larger doses.) If exposed, developing fetuses are the most vulnerable of all. Sometimes mothers subject their children to lead by eating, drinking or breathing lead during pregnancy. Researchers are now examining theories that women store lead in their bones and years later may withdraw it, along with the calcium, during pregnancy and pass it on to their fetuses. Sandra Roseberry of Portsmouth, N.H., probably passed lead on to her daughter Julianne by stripping wallpaper during pregnancy. Julianne's blood-lead level went as high as 100 ug/dl.

Although a less serious culprit than paint, drinking water can raise blood levels, too. When Vice President Dan Quayle recently had his Washington mansion tested, he was disturbed by the levels of lead found in the water. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that lead in water causes 10 to 20 percent of overall childhood lead exposure.

New prism:

The new science about lead's effect on the brain may force policymakers to re-examine some social issues through a new prism. For example, if lead can cause aggressive behavior, learning disabilities and hyperactivity, might it not also be a contributing factor in poor educational performance among low-income blacks, who suffer the most lead poisoning? "The education community has not really understood the dimensions of this because we don't see kids falling over and dying of lead poisoning in the classroom, " says Bailus Walker, dean of the public-health school at the University of Oklahoma and former commissioner of public health in Massachusetts. "But there's a very large number of kids who find it difficult to do analytical work or [even] line up in the cafeteria because their brains are laden with lead."

It's not just the educational community that has ignored the problems of lead. Civilrights advocates, environmental lobbyists, even children's welfare advocates have until recently done almost nothing about lead. The inaction stems mostly from two contradictory beliefs: that the problem had been solved and that it is too big to solve (removing old paint would be a gargantuan task). Congress gave most of the responsibility for solving the lead-paint problem to the HUD in 1971. But HUD has done little about most private housing, and in government-assisted housing it has regulated only peeling paint, whether it has lead in it or not. Many localities still believe they only have to fix peeling paint up to five feet high on walls, ignoring both the laws of Congress and gravity. When trying to promote research about lead, HUD has had mixed results too. In 1975, for example, it paid the Johns-Manville Corp. to find a way of sealing off lead paint. Incredibly, Mansville suggested covering it with asbestos.

The failure for years of government and liberal advocates to focus on lead has been so stark that it begs an uncomfortable question: have attitudes about race and poverty affected people's willingness to take on this problem? Consider Wanda Johnson, a welfare mother from Baltimore with eight children-five of whom have suffered from lead poisoning. Psychological tests have shown her poisoned kids far behind their age group, yet their future teachers or bosses may not have expected much more anyway. "They're going to walk around with a 10-pound weight," says James Ruffin, a University of Maryland School of Law student who tried to force the Johnsons' landlord into making repairs. "But most people are just going to assume they're naturally slower and lazier."