Lead Levels in Blood

Here is a good website that explains lead level and what the number means. http://lead-info.com/levelschart.html

In Ohio they say it is "safe" as long as it is below 10... my son come back as a 16 about 2 years ago. We were told the Lead Detector kits give lots of false positives & they were not recommened by the Health Dept. You should be able to call your local health department & see if they can send in a lead inspector. They will test the house for you, send away their samples to a lab, and give you suggestions on how to reduce the lead in the home. I know here - if they find a problem in the house or yard, the will recommened a local agency that offers grants to rehab the issues.

Also, we were told to wash surfaces (wood floors, window sills, walls, anything that could have been painted before 1970) with a dishwasher soap water mix. When our house was tested - our floors (painted wood floors no carpet), basement door, porch ceiling, front door & baseboards all tested positive for lead. We did get a grant & they came in and put in a new door, covered our old floors with laminate floors to match the dinning room floors we had done ourself, covered the pourch ceiling, painted the basement door & baseboards. Then, before we could return home (they make you stay somewhere else while they do the work to reduce the exposer) they retested the house to make sure the lead was "gone".

So you know - it was explained to us that lead is sweet like candy. So, once a child tastes it - it can be an issue. It took a while to stop my boy from pealing paint off everything. We know there are still some issues w/ our house & we are working on slowly removing all old paint surfaces, but it takes so much $$ to do that. So, we are working on one room at a time.

Something else we were told was to feed our kids foods high in iron, calcium & Vit C, which will help to reduce & keep down the lead levels. Try to avoid really fatty foods - cause the can cause the lead to stay in the body.

I wish you luck - if you are like me... I cried when I got back the bad test on my son. I was so scared & mad at myself... I do everything in the world to protect my kids, but I couldn't protect them from our 1893 house. The place that is suppose to make them feel & keep them safe.

Personnaly, I would take your son & get him retested in about 6 mo. to see if the level goes up or down also. It took us about a year to get our son under the safe level & I'm going to ask for a retest at his next physical... it has been about a year since his last test. Becuase we had his levels very low the last time he tested.

Hope I was somewhat helpful... if you need anymore info, please feel free to contact me.

Take care!

They just found high lead levels in a bunch of juices.... perhaps? http://safemama.com/

I'm just looking into this myself. My son's levels have always been OK so far, despite living in an old house that has lead paint and it's flaking at the windows and door thresholds. But I just found out that a common exposure point is from the bathtub glazes, which contained lead until the 1990s, and it's only the last 1 1/2 years that he's been taking baths in the big tub. So I'm getting a test kit and also getting him tested soon.

The other common exposures are from external sources like roads (there are lead weights that are used to balance tires that end up in the roads) and old home paint that get tracked in on shoes, so the best way to avoid that is removing shoes in the home. The other one is, strangely, levelor-type blinds. This was the source of a friend's problem.

I've also heard that upping calcium intake helps lead in the blood from being taken up into kids bones.

GOOD LUCK!

How did they take his blood? Finger sticks are inaccurate. In MA anything under 10 is considered okay but they are looking to lower it to under 5 because they are finding some issues w/ lower levels. We had this problem with our youngest. we were told our apartment was lead free well we lived there almost a year and he had is lead checked and it was at 8 so our ped wanted it retested. Someone from the state came out and checked the house for free. It was in all the windows, doors, and baseboards. The worst is when its in the windows and doors because of the dust. It makes dust everytime you open and close them and vaccuuming will just blow the dust around. The proper way to clean any lead dust is with a damp cloth. You might want to call your board of health and see if they will come check your home at no cost. Our landlord said she used one of those kits before renting to us. I guess they aren't all that accurate since lead was found all throughout our place. He has been doing much better and his lead level has gone down since we moved into to our home a last summer.

Hi J.,

A lot of toys that are imported to the US have lead. Our government "spot" checks shipments so nothing is reliable. The Shrek glasses that came into McDonald's last month were at toxic levels and they pulled them. Unless your little one is chewing on the walls or you are sanding them to paint, he should not be getting any in his blood stream from your older home. Lead is basically absorbed through ingesting or inhalation. Do you have any old lead crystal drinking glasses or serving bowls in your home? Something that might be his favorite because it belonged to grandma, etc???

I agree with MAMA_3 100%..................

An absorbable multivitamin will help as well. If you go that route, make sure it is pharmaceutical grade. I can recommend one if you like. Flintstones and Walmart type generics are more dangerous than helpful!

M.

J.,

Some of the very highest lead contamination is found in WHOLE GRAINS and grains. So reduce your grain consumption! Even corn. They have found high levels in corn starch overseas.

Drugs
vitamins
SOIL
second hand smoke
CANNED fruits and many juices
Fresh vegetables, especially if grown next to busy roads or fertilized with sewage sludge. Peel root vegetables to help .
lead plumbing
old buildings, etc....

Home test kits are unreliable..Call your Health Dept. they can test your home.The normal range is 1-10 anything over that is high but since it is high on the normal range it is also considered high enough to pose a concern.Did the DR. not tell you to do diet changes?You need to the more fruits & veggies a child has also calcium the less absorption of lead goes into the blood.Begin them today it'll help instead of his normal juice offer Orange juice,milk,cheese yuou can also search LEAD on the search bar and sites will appear then you can do more research The EPA is 1 of them I do believe they also suggest diet changes on these sites as well.Keep in mind though that lead is still around in our toy's,any folk remedies,mexican candy,quarter machine trinkets.

Britta filters don't remove all lead. Most tap water contains lead if the faucet/lines have not been used in a while (e.g., overnight, all day). Run the water for a minute to clear out lead.

I know water is one way that we get a lot of lead. Make sure you buy a water filtration kit- like britta or pura- they will take the lead out of the water you drink.
Currently a lot of our plumbing still has lead in it, and even if it says 100% brass, it can have up to 6% lead in it (legally you don't have to tell people if its 6% or lower).
We use pura 3 filtration- takes lead and other yucky stuff out. You screw it onto your faucet and use it when you want to.
Good luck, 7 is a scary number for lead!

i would do heavy metal detoxing. this could be serious. Dr. Justin Hoffman at Natures Path is good & so is Dr. Palmeri at Portland Family Homeopathy. I just used the regular detection kits & found it all around my house, but really this is a libility issue for your landlords that yiu should look into.

This happened to us too. At my daughters 12 month appt she was a level of 4. We called the health dept and got the house tested for free. Turned out the house was full of lead paint. We were renting, so we moved out asap. We did break the lease to move, and the landlord was a little mad. He didn't give us our security deposit back, but he didn't take us to court or anything. Good thing, because he would have lost. Any judge would say we had every right to break the lease! It was worth it to us. Lead can be very harmful to small kids. The health dept even told us that moving out was the safest thing to do. Lead is the number one cause of retardation in small children. It was worth it to lose the security deposit. No amount of money is worth your child's health!

Don't spend your own money on the home test. Call your local health department! They will test it for free! Our doctor had to fax them a paper saying that our daughter had elevated levels, and they came right out. If you can't find the number for your health dept, then ask your child's doctor. Our pediatrician delt with the health dept all the time. They took care of everything for us.

If it does turn out that the house has lead, I advise you to move out. Lead paint IS a legal reason to break the lease. We could have taken our landlord to court to get our security deposit back, but we just wanted to move on and forget the whole thing so we didn't. 6 months later my daughter was tested again, and she was a 1. So moving out was the best thing we could have done. Good luck and if you have any questions, send me a private message.

You've gotten much good advice already. I wanted to share a link from the WI state government that gives a good explanation of how nutrition affects lead uptake and sources of lead in our diets:
http://dhs.wisconsin.gov/lead/doc/Chap11Nutrition.pdf
Only point I would expand on of theirs is that although it is good to avoid a high-fat diet, it is bad for children to be on a low-fat diet. Children need fat for brain development:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002468.htm
especially a good balance of saturated and unsaturated. And I would differ with this link only in that eggs are a super food with a perfact balance of these fats, so don't avoid eggs for that reason! Because heavy metals are readily stored in fats I would recommend getting organic. It may be twice the cost, but it is still a cheap protein/fat source. Another route is cod liver oil (with heavy metals filtered out), but many people are put off by it. Within the unsaturated fats out there, cod liver oil offers you the most concentrated option for omega 3's (vs 6's and 9's).
http://www.womentowomen.com/healthynutrition/differencebe...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid#Eggs
Anyway, it sounds like his diet is good - at least the iron portion - and eliminating sources should take care of it, but I found these links with their explanations to be worth sharing. Good luck!

Test his toys for lead. My friend's child had higher than normal levels and they were stunned to find high levels of lead in some of his plastic toys - those that were newly puchased! They ended up tossing out ALL the plastic toys and he plays with wooden toys now. And his lead levels are now normal.

Usually, as long as its under 10, they are fine till their next test. Are you sure it was 7? You have had some good suggestions below...maybe old toys? And yes, give him a mulit vitamin if you aren't already.