(Chris Johnson)

After a holiday and first of the year hiatus, the CLEARCorps Blog returns.

I have a question? What happens on December 31, 2010 if there are still significant numbers of children in this country with elevated blood lead levels?

 To understand the question, let us do a bit of time travel and flash back 10 years to February, 2000. Depending on your point of view the 21st century is either well under way to beginning or the 20th century is in its final throes of ending. Bill Clinton is President of the United States. The election of 2000, 9/11, and Katrina are future events waiting to happen. At the time an ambitious and admirable goal is laid out to eliminate children with elevated blood lead levels (EBLs) by 2010. Flash forward 10 years and it is now February 2010. Again depending on your point of view, it’s the beginning of the second decade or the end of the first decade of the 21st century. No matter what your perspective, there are just slightly more than 10 months remaining in the year. In 2000 eliminating children with EBLS by 2010 seemed a worthy and attainable goal. Now that we are actually at 2010, the question is, will we have achieved this goal and if so, how we will know we have?

Seen from a broader perspective, the push to end childhood lead poisoning has been a public health triumph. Compared to the numbers of lead poisoned children in the first seven decades of the 2oth century, the problem has been all but eliminated in the United States. We have seen the action level for EBLs drop from 40 to 25 to 10 µg/dl and yet even as the action levels were dropping, so were the number of children with EBLs. Today, children with EBLs have gone from the rule to the exception. As late as 1997, nearly 8% of American children tested had EBLs ? 10 µg/dl compared to the 250,000 that CDC estimates are elevated today. By any standard, a 90% reduction constitutes a major public health success. However, if by the end of 2010, there are still 250,000 children with EBLs, does it constitute achieving the goal of eliminating children with EBLs by 2010?

 The elimination of lead in gasoline, paint, and solder was a major contributor to the reduction in the number of children with EBLs. Education has also played a major role. Public health officials knew that as the major sources of lead were eliminated and the results began to reverberate throughout society that targeting the remaining population of children with EBLs would be more difficult. Massive education campaigns conducted over the past ten years have made today’s parents much more aware of the lead problem and how to prevent it than they were even 10 years ago.  More of today’s parents are aware of the dangers from lead in dust and the risks from hand to mouth contact. This has contributed to the drop in the number of children with EBLs.

 Yet, it seems that every year new EBL cases arise from sources other than dust. And until we are able to totally eliminate the auxiliary sources of lead exposures, I fear that totally eliminating children with EBLs will not happen. For instance, how many Consumer Product Safety warnings have been issued in the past few years regarding dangers from lead in jewelry, candy, and toys manufactured and imported from other countries. The question I raise, then, is what happens on December 31, 2010 regarding the 2010 goal? Perhaps more importantly, the question on January 1, 2011 is what direction will the campaign take next?