February 22, 2007
Lead Astray
The Cleveland Free Times consulted Center Director Ash Sehgal M.D. on the issue of revising the federal standard for lead poisoning.
"There are new medical studies that suggest that there's adverse effects for kids at levels below 10, things like intellectual impairment, attention deficit disorder, decreased muscle growth, decreased bone growth," says Sehgal. "So we as a public health community in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County have been considering whether it would make sense, based on this new medical evidence, to lower the action level from 10 down to five. [I]f you do that, then the percentage of kids in Cleveland who have elevated blood levels would go from 11 percent to 42 percent."
And later in the article:
As to the assertion that establishing a threshold below 10 would be arbitrary, Sehgal says, "We feel that there's all these kids in Cleveland who are suffering the adverse effects of lead, and, sure, it would be arbitrary to lower it to five instead of three or six or whatever, but you have to start somewhere and we think going down halfway is a good place to begin. Maybe in the future there'll be more studies that'll say it should be even lower, but based on the scientific evidence, we think that five is a reasonable place to shoot for."
You can read the complete story here.