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How does a person get lead poisoning?
A person can be poisoned by eating lead or breathing lead dust. Until 1977, lead was used in house paints. In older buildings, there is usually a lot of lead paint. Peeling or cracking paint in older houses and apartments can be dangerous. Some children like the taste of paint chips, and they chew on window sills and paint chips that fall on the floor.
But you can also get poisoned from dust with lead in it. Dusting with a dry cloth, scraping paint off walls, or vacuuming up paint chips from floors can spread lead dust around the house. Lead dust can get on children’s hands, pacifiers, and toys. When children put things into their mouths, they can swallow lead dust and poison themselves. Even stepping on paint chips or opening and closing windows that have lead paint on them can cause dangerous levels of lead dust in a house. Renovating an older house can create a lot of lead dust. So can repainting an older house if you scrape or sand the old paint without taking special precautions.
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I heard that lead is in dirt, too.
That’s right. Lead can be present in dirt. Children should not eat dirt or play in bare soil.
Also, outside paint from houses or porches comes off into the dirt. For many years, outside paint was designed to lose some of the surface paint through weathering in order to keep the surface looking new. The lead washed off in this process built up in the soil around the house. Children can get poisoned from playing in this lead-filled dirt. It is also dangerous for children to play on empty lots where houses with lead paint have been torn down, since the dirt there is full of lead. Lead does not decay or dissolve; once lead is in dirt, it stays there until it is removed.
The dirt near highways and busy streets often has a lot of lead in it from gasoline. Even though lead in gas was banned in 1976, the lead that settled in dirt near roads does not go away. Also, although the sale of lead-based paint for the inside and outside of homes was banned in 1978, it is still available for industrial use. Lead-based paint is commonly used for painting steel on bridges and highways, and the dirt near these structures is often highly contaminated.
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Is lead in water?
Lead is present in some water pipes and solder used in plumbing. (Solder is used to connect pipes together.) In buildings built before 1930, water pipes were often made of lead. You can tell if your pipes are lead by the color: lead is dull gray, not silver. It scratches easily with a house key. If a magnet sticks to your silver or gray pipes, that means they are not made out of lead. In buildings built between 1930 and the mid-1980s, builders often used copper pipes but joined them with lead solder. Lead solder in public drinking water systems was banned in 1986, but many pipes in houses, apartment buildings, schools, and other buildings still have it in them. Lead from the soldered joints in copper water pipes is now the major source of lead-contaminated drinking water.
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Are there other places where lead is found?
Some food cans have lead solder. The United States banned lead solder in cans in 1995, but cans from other countries may have lead solder. There may be lead in the colored ink in some food wrappers. Colored newsprint and car batteries contain lead. Some toys from other countries are painted with lead paint.
More than 100 brands of candy, most made in Mexico, have been identified with dangerous levels of lead. Because it is a sticky fruit, tamarind has been found to have lead from dirt or fertilizer that has stuck to it. Often the ink on the candy wrappers—that children like to lick—also contains lead. Chili powder often contains lead because the chili was not cleaned before it was milled so contaminated dirt is mixed with the chili powder. Also, chili is sometimes ground at old mills that are contaminated with lead that gets into the ground chili.
Some American brands of temporary hair colorings contain lead acetate. They should be used only according to the product’s directions. Foreign cosmetics and eyeliners also often contain lead. Women from Middle Eastern cultures sometimes paint eyeliner called “kohl” or “galena” around the eyes of their baby girls, without knowing that they are poisoning them. An Indian cosmetic, sindoor, has caused lead poisoning when it was used as a food coloring. And bindi powder is another example of a lead-based cosmetic that should be avoided.
Pottery, dinner plates, and cookware from other countries may have glazes with high levels of lead. They should never be used to hold food nor should pewter mugs and plates. Limits for lead in dishes were set in the United States less than 20 years ago, so many old American ceramic dishes also have lead in them and should not be used to hold food or liquids.
Curtain weights, fishing sinkers, and wine bottle caps are often made out of lead. Some imported silver jewelry, vinyl mini-blinds, crayons, and playground equipment also cause lead poisoning. Also, some home or folk remedies contain poisonous lead, such as azarcon and greta (used for indigestion), pay-loo-ah (used for rashes and fevers), and litargirio (used as a deodorant and for burns and foot fungus).
You can even be exposed to lead from burning certain kinds of candles. Some wicks are cotton woven around a metallic core that contains lead. As the wick burns, it releases potentially harmful lead into the air, which can be inhaled. As there is no way to tell which metallic wicks are dangerous, you should avoid use of all candles with metallic wicks.
Finally, some hobbies, like working with stained glass, making pottery, refinishing painted furniture, and making bullets, can expose you and your family to lead.
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