Is Your Child Drinking Lead at School? Why No One Knows For Sure

The AHA! Team — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 05:24:22 +0000

Patrick Tims via NaturalHealth365 – It is no secret that ADHD is on the rise. However, the medical community has not yet identified a clear cause for the increase in ADHD prevalence. It has long been suspected that ADHD is tied to lead exposure, especially exposure at an early age. Lead exposure can also cause seizures, hearing loss, constipation, vomiting, and developmental delays. Instead of pushing Big Pharma pills (and shots) on our kids, schools should start testing lead levels. The details of such potential lead exposure were recently highlighted in a study published in Science of The Total Environment. Lead exposure is quickly becoming a public health crisis that weakens the adults of tomorrow Environmentalists and physicians often highlight how the Baby Boomer generation was exposed to lead during their formative years. Similarly, much attention has been given to Generation Z’s microplastic exposure. However, there’s less awareness about the potential lead exposure faced by Generation Z and Generation Alpha, especially in schools. Lead is a dangerous contaminant because it cannot be seen or smelled, making it an invisible threat. In children, even minimal exposure can cause a range of serious health issues. While lead-based paint was banned for residential use in the late 1970s, today’s students may still encounter lead through the water systems in older school buildings. Many schools in the United States were built before 1986, the year Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act to restrict the use of plumbing materials and pipes that leach lead. In these older schools, lead can contaminate water as it leaches from plumbing materials, fixtures, and pipes. A 2018 Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation revealed that nearly 40% of school districts tested showed elevated lead levels in their water systems. State-level studies have uncovered even more alarming statistics. Nearly 50% of schools tested in some states had lead contamination in water consumed by children. In Portland, 99% of public schools tested positive for lead in 2016. Similarly, a 2018 study in Detroit found lead in 16 out of 24 schools tested. The evidence is clear: lead exposure remains a significant risk, and no level of lead is safe for children. How to prevent your child from exposure to harmful lead at school and also at home A child who goes through the typical school system spends about 15,600 hours in school, often drinking water from fountains or sinks. If your child’s school water supply hasn’t been tested for lead, request testing to be conducted. Parents should also have their home water tested for lead. Internal plumbing materials in homes can sometimes contain lead, which can leach into the water. Lead is odorless and invisible once dissolved in water, making it difficult to detect without testing. By testing your home’s water, you can ensure your family’s water is safe. Lead is odorless and invisible once dissolved in water Once your home’s water has been tested and found safe, fill a stainless steel bottle for your child to bring to school. Consider providing an extra water bottle for their locker so they don’t have to rely on potentially lead-contaminated school water. Ideally, the water your child takes to school should be distilled or purified at home to eliminate impurities before consumption. Sources for this article include: Sciencedirect.com Nasbe.org EPA.gov To read the original article click here.

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Lead Contamination in Calcium Supplements

AHA Publisher — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 07:00:56 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – Do calcium citrate and calcium carbonate have as much lead as calcium supplements derived from dolomite and animal bone? You may remember I’ve explored the role calcium supplements may play in reducing lead exposure during pregnancy and breastfeeding, but that assumes the supplements themselves are not contaminated. Supplements with lead? It all started with an extraordinary case report published in 1977, entitled “Lead-Contaminated Health Food.” As I discuss in my video Lead in Calcium Supplements, a doctor prescribed a dietary supplement for a young woman with painful periods. Not just any young woman, though. She was television and movie star Allison Hayes, famous for her roles in films such as Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. And, not just any physician, but Dr. Henry Bieler, physician to the stars, who told his patients to forget about toxic drugs; “food is your best medicine,” as you can see in an advertisement shown at 0:44 in my video. In this case, it was a calcium supplement made from horse bone. She took it every day, but got weaker and sicker, and by “1967, her acting career ended when she became unable to walk without a cane.” Ms. Hayes saw doctor after doctor after doctor, 22 in all, to no avail. She reported she concluded she had three options: “(1) commit suicide, (2) go to a psychiatrist to attempt to learn to live with the pain…; or (3) find the answer myself.” She had some friends drive her to a medical library. By then, she couldn’t even walk and had to be carried in. She sat on the floor inside the library, day after day, and finally came across a book on industrial toxicology that described what she soon realized was a classic case of lead poisoning. She paid to have the calcium supplement tested, and, indeed, it was full of lead. At first, she was relieved. “Then the anger set in.” Doctor after doctor had essentially dismissed her as hysterical, and, ultimately, she had to depend on herself to educate them. The silver lining was that, in a letter, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration actually credited “the intrepid actress for being ‘a key stimulus’” for the agency’s plans to start looking into regulating heavy metals in foods and supplements. Unfortunately, the letter arrived after Ms. Hayes had already died from leukemia, which may have been triggered by the lead poisoning or the 300 x-ray exams she got from those “22 baffled physicians.” Wouldn’t you think the supplement industry would clean up its own act? “It is unrealistic to expect the ‘health food’ industry and ‘wellness’ press to dampen their evangelistic promotion of these products on a unilateral basis,” that is, on their own. Where did the lead in her supplements even come from? Remember, she had been taking a calcium supplement made from horse bone. Lead gets stored in your bones, so when you take supplements made out of bones, you can get exposed. In that case, was that one calcium supplement just the “tip of an iceberg”? At first, we thought it was just from the bone supplements and dolomite, a mineral that can be contaminated with lead, but then calcium carbonate—oyster shell calcium, chelated calcium─was found to have comparable lead levels to animal bone, as you can see at 2:56 in my video. This inspired a comprehensive survey of the lead content of 70 different brands of calcium supplements. As you can see at 3:09 in my video, lead levels “varied by almost 300-fold,” with some two, three, or even four times the tolerable daily intake of lead for children. More than half of the most common, “natural source calcium supplements,” like those containing oyster shell, had lead ingestion rates exceeding the benchmark for children. A follow-up study confirmed that most calcium supplements from natural sources exceeded at least some of the most stringent lead standards, but the levels only got up to about 8 micrograms, whereas some of the synthetic sources were up to three times that, as you can see at 3:27 in my video. A small human study of calcium citrate was performed in which bone biopsies were taken before and after about five years of supplementation. As you can see at 3:49 in my video, there was no change in the control group, as expected, and only a statistically insignificant increase in the calcium citrate group. However, “one cannot assume that a given brand is uniformly safe, because some of their products may have high and others low lead levels.” What does this mean? “Patients and consumers ought not assume safe lead levels from preparations that have brand names or are supplied by recognized pharmaceutical companies”—that is, there’s no guarantee, even if we’re familiar with the manufacturer. There is some good news, though. After decades of concern, lead levels in calcium supplements have come down. In fact, they’ve come down so much that changes in lead levels in your blood, taking the average lead-contaminated calcium supplement, would be minimal at this point. So, these findings on lead contamination of supplements should be a cause for celebration, not alarm—at least according to a consultant to a calcium supplement manufacturer. What an amazing—and amazingly sad—story. KEY TAKEAWAYS The levels of lead in calcium supplements have decreased after decades of concern, but even widely recognized pharmaceutical companies and well-known brand names may not guarantee safety. Lead is stored in bones, so taking calcium supplements made from bones, for example, may give you exposure. Calcium carbonate (chelated calcium, or oyster shell calcium) has also been found to have comparable levels of lead to animal bone. In a survey of the lead content of 70 brands of calcium supplements, more than half were found to have lead ingestion rates exceeding the benchmark for children. Allison Haynes, famed actor from such films as Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, took a daily calcium supplement made from horse bone and deteriorated so greatly she became unable to walk. When doctors were unable to diagnose her, she pored over books at a medical library and, after reviewing a book on industrial toxicology, realized she had a classic case of lead poisoning. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration credited the late Ms. Haynes for being “a key stimulus” for its plans to consider regulating heavy metals in foods and supplements. To read the original article click here.

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Is Your Child Drinking Lead at School? Why No One Knows For Sure

Lead Contamination in Calcium Supplements