Study Finds No Safe Level of Lead

“The study indicates there is no threshold for the adverse consequences of children’s exposure to lead,” says Bruce Lanphear, M.D., director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and lead author of a study on the effects of lead on children. Published in the July 2005 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, the study found evidence of intellectual impairments at levels well below the threshold of 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood set by the federal Centers for Disease Control for children five years old and younger. The study also found that impairments from lower levels of exposure are proportionally greater than impairments from higher levels. The complete study is online at ehp.niehs.nih.gov.