lead in my home, need support! (crossposted)

Quote:
Yes! We lived in two older homes when I had crawlers, and I had both of them tested for lead...and they were fine.

You should, if you don't already, frequently sponge clean the floor under the windows if they are opened and closed often. If they aren't, it's not such a risk because it won't be creating dust. And yes, wash his hands often, especially if he's crawling and before eating. And I bet he will be fine. Have you had his iron levels tested lately? Low iron is often a sign of high lead.

Quote:
Thank you so much for replying. Did you have chipping paint in your house though? That is what I am most worried about, there are huge chips of paint in the windows and tons of dust. I didn't remove them because I thought as long as you don't disturb the lead paint it is fine. I didn't think about the whole friction in the windows issue. Now we must keep them closed which sucks because I feel like having stuffy unventilated air in the home isn't very healthy either.

He had an iron test a week ago and it was 11.7, which the nurse said was fine for an 18 mo. old, but when i looked it up online it said anything below 12 is considered low. Hmmm... anyone have any info on that?

I am absolutely freaking out and near tears right now as I am pregnant and very worried for myself and ds.

Quote:

If it is any comfort, we lived in a house where we found out after 3 years that the house was littered with lead in old paint. The kids had been playing in this for 3 years, from newborn to preschooler age, and I was pregnant with my youngest in the house and gave birth to him 6 months before we moved out.

They were playing in the "dust" all the time, chipping the paint off of baseboards, walls, windows etc and I freaked out too... I knew that they must be completely poisoned by now, after playing and most likely putting all that in their mouths.

We quickly moved out, and I asked the ped. to test them. Despite -confirmed- high led levels in the house, their tests was completely negative... I tested myself and I too had no detectable levels.
I could not believe it... I cried from relief.

I know this is not always the case, that lead really can damage any human being but in our case, it was not enough to give them any kind of trouble.

Quote:
Yes, we did have lots of chipping paint. Not only was it chipping, but we were remodeling it, in both of the homes. They were both built in the 40s.

My pediatrician told me that lead-poisoning from paint was actually very rare, and the only times he had ever heard of it was when people were remodeling old Victorians. I read an article about how rare it was and how much paint someone would actually have to consume, it was broken down by ages of homes, too. I'll see if I can find it.

Ds lead level is 10. Where I live, that's pretty low, so its all about perspective! We live in over a 100 year old house in a neighborhood where most of the houses are over 100, almost every kid we know is a least above a 6 or 7 lead level.

Our health department has programs to do refinishing/repainting and such with grant money if you are low income and we are on the waiting list to have work done, hopefully we will hear back sometime this month.

we make sure ds has a healthy diet, full of iron, vitamin c and calcium. We wet mop. We use Simple Green which chelates with lead. We rigged up our Swiffer Wet Jet to use simple green (we altered the bottle that they sell so we can refill it) and that way we can throw away the swiffer pads that have collected all the lead dust instead of using a reusable mop and just spreading it around.

And I keep in mind what the pp said, which is basically that they only stopped using lead in paint in 1978, so probably all of us lived in houses with lead paint, went to schools with lead paint in them. So yeah its bad for you, yeah it sucks, but I try not to get too worried about it.

We, unfortunately, have extensive experience with elevated lead levels. My DH also works in public health and is a registered lead inspector and regularly takes classes about deleading and the effects of lead exposure through the state.

At the moment, any number over 5 is one they want to keep an eye on, any number over 10 is one they want you to do some active avoidance of exposure. There is a push to make this latter number 5 instead of 10. Lead in the system is a scary thing and no one really knows just what exposure is toxic to some degree. As I'm sure you know, even elevated lead levels (not just poisoning) can cause behavioral, systemic and cognitave issues, especially in children.

Do make sure you wet-clean surfaces regularly. DO NOT use a sponge, but rather paper towels that you seal and throw away after use. Wear gloves, especially if you think you may have another baby some day. Wear a mask. It's best not open the windows at all, but certainly safer to open them from the top rather than the bottom. You can use duct tape to line the window sills and wells as a stop-gap measure to limit chipping and dust. If you can either buy or borrow a HEPA-filter vaccuum, that is very effective at removing lead dust from the floors. It's also a good idea to check out your child's toys now that you are lead-aware. Regularly wash any toys that are on the floor and especially oned that your child holds close to his face or puts in his mouth. Also be aware that some cans of food have lead in the lining, especially imported foods.

If you are renting, you have the right (well, in MA you do, I am not familiar with rental laws regarding lead in other states), if your child has an elevated (greater than 5) level to have a complete lead inspection at the expense of the landlord. If lead is found, the landlord must delead the unit and house you while the work is being done.

Once you child's levels come back, you can begin to address what to do about it. Certainly your ped may recommend an iron supplement. You can also make sure you cook in cast iron pans several times per week and that will benefit you all in the iron department. Make sure you request that, if the level is above 5, you retest every 3 or 4 months to keep an eye one it. If there's a spike (like if a chip is ingested), you'll want to know about it to treat it promptly, and be able to trace the source.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. HTH.

Quote:
This is true, but not always a correlation. DD's iron levels were great when she tested at a level of 47 for lead.

Calcium and vitamin C are also really important for elevated lead levels.

Regarding the PP who mentioned Victorian houses and how much paint you need to consume: first off, my DD's lead poisoning (which was, as I said above, a 47 at the age of 14 months), occurred while living in my mom's circa 1960's house. And yes, it was most likely lead paint that did it (she had work done on the outside of the house, and we found lead paint on the porch where we used to sit). Also, the doc who saw us when we were admitted at the hospital was a pediatric doctor who had done his residency in Baltimore and saw a lot of lead poisoning there. He claimed that a child only needed to ingest the amount of lead paint the size of a pin head in order to get lead poisoning. I'm not saying your source was wrong, and mine was right, Fuamami, but that's just what I was told.

I'm not saying this all to scare you... I just take lead poisoning very seriously. Chances are good that your child is fine, but if he's not, all of MammaG's and Tbone's suggestions are really great. (Oh, and if you want a story about recovering for lead poisoning, PM me.)

I would say that you're on the right track in getting your child tested for lead and doing things like wet mopping, not wearing shoes in the house, etc. are the way to go.

A lead level of 10 or even 5 for that matter, is somewhat arbitrary, as long-term effects from lead exposure have been reported from levels as low as 3. The effort to get it changed to 5 requires an act of Congress (literally) and has been going on for years (http://children.webmd.com/news/20071...gh-expert-says). These things move s-l-o-w-l-y. A level of 10, which is the level that "triggers" an investigation by state and local health departments in many locations, is too high according to many activists.

There is also a difference in the lab results depending on whether or not they did a finger stick or a venous blood draw. The venous blood draw is more accurate of the two and the only way I'd go knowing what I know now (but most parents don't know this and docs tend to order the finger stick as it's quicker, cheaper, and "seems" less traumatic for children even though it actually hurts more because there are so many nerve endings in the finger tip).

My daughter's elevated lead level was discovered when she was 9 months old and we lived in a condo that was freshly painted and newly rehabbed. There was absolutely no chipping paint anywhere. It is true that the most common source of lead poisoning in many areas is in older homes that are being rehabbed, but what many people do not realize is that lead paint is still available for purchase by building contractors as it's used in shipping (it's cheap and sticks to the hull of boats and ships). When lead paint is on contact surfaces such as doors and windows, it creates lead dust every time that door or window is opened -- dust you can't necessarily see -- and lead dust is sticky stuff (which is why wet mopping with TSP which you can get at the hardware store is helpful). The lead dust sticks to things inside AND outside which is why it's important to not wear shoes (or, if you can help it, even the clothes you wear outside) in the house because you bring the dust from the air, sidewalk, lawn, etc. inside and track it all over the floors. Washing hands frequently is also very important.

Another potential source of lead is old pipes that contaminate the water (and it won't be filtered out in a Brita or some other system).

I called the US EPA and they contract out their lead work to a private agency. The people there are absolutely wonderful and have lots of advice for how to deal with mitigation and such.

The reality is that they just don't know what the "safe" level is for lead (and some argue that there is no safe level) so it's important to be very proactive and minimize exposure whenever possible. There is some that occurs in the environment naturally, so you can't exclude all exposure, but doing what you can is a good thing.