‘It’s only been six weeks since they found lead in applesauce’
In the United States, despite a decades-long ban, millions of people still face the invisible threat of lead poisoning in their homes and water systems. Lead is a potent neurotoxin that impairs brain development in children and causes an array of health issues in adults, including high blood pressure and kidney damage, according to a U.S. National Institute of Health study and almost every other journal on the issue.The threat of lead is silent. Those affected often show no apparent symptoms, yet the damage can be lifelong and irreversible. Children exposed to lead can experience far-reaching societal consequences, according to various studies, including lower IQ and a host of behavioral problems. They earn less throughout their lives and work fewer years.More than 50% of all children in the United States under six years old have detectable lead in their blood, according to a 2021 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).Removal of the source is the only way to reduce harm. Nevertheless, startling federal data reveals that 22 million Americans still get their drinking water through lead pipes, and around 38 million homes still contain lead-based paint.The issue predominantly plagues urban centers like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit, with some overlap for lead pipes and paint. Chicago tops the list on both fronts, with an alarming 400,000 lead pipelines—contaminating the water of 75% of city blocks. A recent study published in March 2024 in JAMA highlights a troubling statistic: nearly 70% of Chicago’s children under six live in these neighborhoods. Black and Hispanic communities are disproportionately affected, with less frequent testing yet higher exposure rates. While the paint is more challenging to track, it’s estimated that 99% of homes built in Chicago before 1978 have some level of paint toxicity. That constitutes a vast majority of the city’s housing stock.Despite the known risks, efforts to remove lead from our homes and water have been slow, hindered by decades of political inertia and lobbying in Congress. In late 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new rule that seeks to rid the country of lead pipes in 10 years.Reckon spoke to Dr. Mary Jean Brown, adjunct professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, about why lead persists and what you can do about it.Reckon:The country seems awash with various toxic harms that advocacy groups and state and federal governments are trying to address. Many of these threats are seemingly new. Yet the ban on lead pipes was introduced 40 years ago. Why do we still see them in so many municipalities?Dr. Mary Jean Brown:Lead is a very useful metal that we’ve had since Pompeii, the Roman Empire, and in most places where water was being transported from one place to another. It was well into the 1980s that the city of Chicago still required all water pipes to be lead. In Alabama, one of the problems is that the only way you can really know if it’s a lead pipe is if you dig it up, take a key, and scratch it. It scratches easily because it’s soft. Most places don’t have a really good inventory of where their lead pipes are.I have some idea of what kinds of housing are most likely to have lead pipes. And certainly, the Gulf Coast of Alabama will have some of this housing. It’s not going to be like the high rises in New York City. Because you can’t run 100 housing units on two-inch water pipe. In the south, it’s pretty common as it will be in housing that was built before 1986, for the most part, because that’s when the federal ban went into effect for the use of lead water pipes.We’re building all kinds of beautiful things in cities, like parks, civic centers and theaters. Why are we not replacing the pipes when we build or pull up roads? This seems like a public health crisis. One reason is that we have a tendency in this business to put one source of lead in competition with another. Our focus until maybe 10 to 15 years ago, was lead paint and lead paint contaminated house dust and soil. We were worried about children who had blood levels that were considered very high, about 15 to 25 micrograms per deciliter. Now we worry about blood levels of 3.5 micrograms per deciliter. So, as we got better at lowering blood lead levels, we began to realize there are other sources that certainly are not as concentrated as what we were looking at in the 80s and the 90s, but they are still contributing to children’s blood lead levels.That’s combined with our inability to find a safe blood level for children. If a child has a blood level of five micrograms per deciliter, most places will go in and look at the house and try to figure out where the exposure is coming from to stop the exposure. That can keep the blood level from going up, but any damage that may have been done in the process of getting to five is probably irreversible. We need to prevent children from being exposed before they have a lead level that triggers an intervention. It’s a very tiny amount—3.5 micrograms per deciliter is 35 parts per billion. But you don’t have to have very much to get you up there, but that can do a very big amount of damage.We need to be proactive and remove lead from its sources, including pipes, paints, contaminated soil, and dust, especially around houses built before 1978. This includes industrial emissions, including putting lead in cinnamon for applesauce pouches.Applesauce! Is that thing?It’s only been six weeks since they found lead in applesauce. They found lead in cinnamon in the dollar stores as well. There’s always these new products that are coming to market. The customs people are pretty good about testing things, but things slip through. And there’s lead in spices and traditional teas and other things that people bring with them when they move to the States.Is there a ban on lead paint across the board?There’s a ban on lead in residential house paints, but there’s no ban on lead in the paint that goes on the line on roads or the paint that goes on your boat. It’s unfortunate that these other sources of lead paints tend to bleed into the residential market. You mentioned the effects that lead can have on children in small doses. What does exposure actually do to a child’s health and their development?Small children under the age of six have brains that are developing very quickly, making them vulnerable. The target organ of lead for those children is the brain, but it also interferes with every enzyme system in the body. What happens with these children with regard to blood levels is that it’s a risk factor, not a diagnosis. It shows that these children are at risk and struggling in school. They’re at risk of having poor impulse control, which affects their judgment and their ability to control emotions. Those two factors can put them on a really bad life course. Children who have blood levels above five or six micrograms per deciliter are more likely not to make the transition in school when academic performance standards change.What signs should families look for?In the third grade, children move from learning to read to reading to learn. In the eighth grade, you move from memorizing arithmetic facts to using math concepts. Children with lead in their blood can have trouble making those transitions. They’re also four times more likely to be involved with the juvenile justice system because they can’t control their impulses and they have poor judgment. They are also more likely to repeat a grade in school and less likely to graduate from high school.But I want to be very clear that this is a risk factor. If you give me a kindergarten class where everybody had a lead level of five or higher when they were two years old and another class where nobody had lead levels, I can tell you that the second kindergarten kids are, on average, doing better than the first. But that doesn’t mean that Susan, who was in the first kindergarten, is not going to MIT. There are just too many other factors that influence IQ.The thing about lead is it’s one factor we can do something about.It seems, generally speaking, that underperforming schools exist in low-income areas where lead could be present. It seems like a double blow, alongside other societal issues. Is that something you’ve seen in your research?Yeah, sure. First off, low-income rental properties are not as well maintained. It’s not in the nature of paint to remain intact. There’s peeling and the person who’s living in that unit doesn’t control the condition of the paint the way the person who owns it does. That’s number one.Number two, there certainly has been redlining and housing discrimination over years and years, which also adds to this picture. These various impacts are cumulative. If you have a disorganized family, a family where education is not a priority or a lousy school, then you add lead-in. It’s bad.There is an endpoint to how resilient a person can be.How can people protect themselves? Is there anything they can look out for in their water or on their walls that might help them identify lead?That’s a very good point. You can get a lead paint inspection. You hire somebody, and they come in with a machine and it tells you how much lead is in the paint on the wall. You can also buy test kits, usually at Home Depot or Amazon. That changes color. You just rub it and you can see that if it turns dark pink or dark blue, it’s lead paint. This is really important for people to do if they’re going to do any kind of renovation in a house because that really liberates a lot of lead.They need to know the EPA has a wonderful book, Renovate Right. That will tell people exactly how to do it or have their contractor do it.
Lead still plagues American’s water and homes 40 years after the first federal bans
In the United States, despite a decades-long ban, millions of people still face the invisible threat of lead poisoning in their homes and water systems. Lead is a potent neurotoxin that impairs brain development in children and causes an array of health issues in adults, including high blood pressure and kidney damage, according to a U.S. National Institute of Health study and almost every other journal on the issue.
The threat of lead is silent. Those affected often show no apparent symptoms, yet the damage can be lifelong and irreversible. Children exposed to lead can experience far-reaching societal consequences, according to various studies, including lower IQ and a host of behavioral problems. They earn less throughout their lives and work fewer years.
More than 50% of all children in the United States under six years old have detectable lead in their blood, according to a 2021 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).Removal of the source is the only way to reduce harm. Nevertheless, startling federal data reveals that 22 million Americans still get their drinking water through lead pipes, and around 38 million homes still contain lead-based paint.
The issue predominantly plagues urban centers like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit, with some overlap for lead pipes and paint.
Chicago tops the list on both fronts, with an alarming 400,000 lead pipelines—contaminating the water of 75% of city blocks. A recent study published in March 2024 in JAMA highlights a troubling statistic: nearly 70% of Chicago’s children under six live in these neighborhoods. Black and Hispanic communities are disproportionately affected, with less frequent testing yet higher exposure rates. While the paint is more challenging to track, it’s estimated that 99% of homes built in Chicago before 1978 have some level of paint toxicity. That constitutes a vast majority of the city’s housing stock.
Despite the known risks, efforts to remove lead from our homes and water have been slow, hindered by decades of political inertia and lobbying in Congress. In late 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new rule that seeks to rid the country of lead pipes in 10 years.
Reckon spoke to Dr. Mary Jean Brown, adjunct professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, about why lead persists and what you can do about it.
Reckon:
The country seems awash with various toxic harms that advocacy groups and state and federal governments are trying to address. Many of these threats are seemingly new. Yet the ban on lead pipes was introduced 40 years ago. Why do we still see them in so many municipalities?
Dr. Mary Jean Brown:
Lead is a very useful metal that we’ve had since Pompeii, the Roman Empire, and in most places where water was being transported from one place to another. It was well into the 1980s that the city of Chicago still required all water pipes to be lead. In Alabama, one of the problems is that the only way you can really know if it’s a lead pipe is if you dig it up, take a key, and scratch it. It scratches easily because it’s soft. Most places don’t have a really good inventory of where their lead pipes are.
I have some idea of what kinds of housing are most likely to have lead pipes. And certainly, the Gulf Coast of Alabama will have some of this housing. It’s not going to be like the high rises in New York City. Because you can’t run 100 housing units on two-inch water pipe. In the south, it’s pretty common as it will be in housing that was built before 1986, for the most part, because that’s when the federal ban went into effect for the use of lead water pipes.
We’re building all kinds of beautiful things in cities, like parks, civic centers and theaters. Why are we not replacing the pipes when we build or pull up roads? This seems like a public health crisis.
One reason is that we have a tendency in this business to put one source of lead in competition with another. Our focus until maybe 10 to 15 years ago, was lead paint and lead paint contaminated house dust and soil. We were worried about children who had blood levels that were considered very high, about 15 to 25 micrograms per deciliter. Now we worry about blood levels of 3.5 micrograms per deciliter. So, as we got better at lowering blood lead levels, we began to realize there are other sources that certainly are not as concentrated as what we were looking at in the 80s and the 90s, but they are still contributing to children’s blood lead levels.
That’s combined with our inability to find a safe blood level for children. If a child has a blood level of five micrograms per deciliter, most places will go in and look at the house and try to figure out where the exposure is coming from to stop the exposure. That can keep the blood level from going up, but any damage that may have been done in the process of getting to five is probably irreversible. We need to prevent children from being exposed before they have a lead level that triggers an intervention. It’s a very tiny amount—3.5 micrograms per deciliter is 35 parts per billion. But you don’t have to have very much to get you up there, but that can do a very big amount of damage.
We need to be proactive and remove lead from its sources, including pipes, paints, contaminated soil, and dust, especially around houses built before 1978. This includes industrial emissions, including putting lead in cinnamon for applesauce pouches.
Applesauce! Is that thing?
It’s only been six weeks since they found lead in applesauce. They found lead in cinnamon in the dollar stores as well. There’s always these new products that are coming to market. The customs people are pretty good about testing things, but things slip through. And there’s lead in spices and traditional teas and other things that people bring with them when they move to the States.
Is there a ban on lead paint across the board?
There’s a ban on lead in residential house paints, but there’s no ban on lead in the paint that goes on the line on roads or the paint that goes on your boat. It’s unfortunate that these other sources of lead paints tend to bleed into the residential market.
You mentioned the effects that lead can have on children in small doses. What does exposure actually do to a child’s health and their development?
Small children under the age of six have brains that are developing very quickly, making them vulnerable. The target organ of lead for those children is the brain, but it also interferes with every enzyme system in the body.
What happens with these children with regard to blood levels is that it’s a risk factor, not a diagnosis. It shows that these children are at risk and struggling in school. They’re at risk of having poor impulse control, which affects their judgment and their ability to control emotions. Those two factors can put them on a really bad life course. Children who have blood levels above five or six micrograms per deciliter are more likely not to make the transition in school when academic performance standards change.
What signs should families look for?
In the third grade, children move from learning to read to reading to learn. In the eighth grade, you move from memorizing arithmetic facts to using math concepts. Children with lead in their blood can have trouble making those transitions. They’re also four times more likely to be involved with the juvenile justice system because they can’t control their impulses and they have poor judgment. They are also more likely to repeat a grade in school and less likely to graduate from high school.
But I want to be very clear that this is a risk factor. If you give me a kindergarten class where everybody had a lead level of five or higher when they were two years old and another class where nobody had lead levels, I can tell you that the second kindergarten kids are, on average, doing better than the first. But that doesn’t mean that Susan, who was in the first kindergarten, is not going to MIT. There are just too many other factors that influence IQ.
The thing about lead is it’s one factor we can do something about.
It seems, generally speaking, that underperforming schools exist in low-income areas where lead could be present. It seems like a double blow, alongside other societal issues. Is that something you’ve seen in your research?
Yeah, sure. First off, low-income rental properties are not as well maintained. It’s not in the nature of paint to remain intact. There’s peeling and the person who’s living in that unit doesn’t control the condition of the paint the way the person who owns it does. That’s number one.
Number two, there certainly has been redlining and housing discrimination over years and years, which also adds to this picture. These various impacts are cumulative. If you have a disorganized family, a family where education is not a priority or a lousy school, then you add lead-in. It’s bad.
There is an endpoint to how resilient a person can be.
How can people protect themselves? Is there anything they can look out for in their water or on their walls that might help them identify lead?
That’s a very good point. You can get a lead paint inspection. You hire somebody, and they come in with a machine and it tells you how much lead is in the paint on the wall. You can also buy test kits, usually at Home Depot or Amazon. That changes color. You just rub it and you can see that if it turns dark pink or dark blue, it’s lead paint. This is really important for people to do if they’re going to do any kind of renovation in a house because that really liberates a lot of lead.
They need to know the EPA has a wonderful book, Renovate Right. That will tell people exactly how to do it or have their contractor do it.