Dangers of Environmental Lead to Homeowners
The following article suggests that lead is still more of a danger to our children that commonly believed due to deposits from leaded gas that settled onto the soil and were ingested by children. While this is the largest source of environmental lead exposure for most people there are other sources.
America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
New research finds Pb is the hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD
epidemic. And fixing the problem is a lot cheaper than doing nothing.
By Kevin Drum | Thu Jan. 3, 2013 3:02 AM PST
. . . In 1994, Rick Nevin was a consultant working for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development on
the costs and benefits of removing lead paint from old houses. This has been a topic of intense study because of
the growing body of research linking lead exposure in small children with a whole raft of complications later in
life, including lower IQ, hyperactivity, behavioral problems, and learning disabilities.
But as Nevin was working on that assignment, his client suggested they might be missing something. A recent
study had suggested a link between childhood lead exposure and juvenile delinquency later on. Maybe reducing
lead exposure had an effect on violent crime too?
. . . Gasoline lead may explain as much as 90 percent of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.
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Just One Lick
Lead contamination in soil is a danger to small children who play in the dirt and may lick their hands. A leading toxicologist says it takes only one lick to exceed a child's maximum daily tolerance of lead."Just One Lick": The Hidden Lead That Could Sicken Your KidsAn interview with pioneering lead toxicologist Howard Mielke.
By Sarah Zhang | Thu Jan. 3, 2013 1:21 PM PST
Next time you inhale, you may want to thank toxicologist Howard Mielke for your lead-free air. Mielke's research helped phase out lead from gasoline in the 1970s—a campaign that was successful in part because he managed to sample the lead-contaminated soil in his legislators' own backyards. But Mielke considers his work far from done. As Kevin Drum writes in his Mother Jones cover story "America's Real Criminal Element: Lead [1]," remnants of the toxic metal, once disseminated by leaded gasoline into the air we breathed, still linger in the soil around us. Now in his 70s, the Tulane University professor and former Peace Corps volunteer continues to passionately campaign to clean up soil in cities.
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Is There Lead In Your House?
The neurotoxic element may be lurking in your pipes, window frames—even garden plants. What to look
out for, especially if you have kids crawling around.
By Sarah Zhang | Thu Jan. 3, 2013 3:06 AM PST
WHY HAS THE CRIME DECLINE IN LOS ANGELES SLOWED DOWN?
How Dangerous is the Lead in Bullets
EPA Lead site
National Institute of environmental health sciences
Effects of lead on the environment
by Deni Greene
This article is extracted from the interim report ("Revising Australian Guidelines for Lead", July 1993) to the NHMRC, of the RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) consultancy team, for which Deni Greene is the senior researcher. The final report is due out at the end of July '93.
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