Lead Poisoning

Kids put lots of weird things in their mouths, especially during the oral exploration phase when infants start learning to eat solid foods and are teething like crazy. This practice helps develop a kiddo’s senses and feeding patterns, but we do want to make sure what they are putting in their mouths is not going to cause injury or long-lasting effects. That is why things geared towards kids or are around kids (and all people for that matter) don’t have lead in them. 

Lead poisoning and toxicity can cause problems with brain development in the pediatric population. This is why we usually test kids for lead poisoning/exposure when they start walking or crawling away from you and are chewing on everything.  This is especially important to test for if your kiddo is living or visiting a home/building built before 1978, as about 75% of homes built before then contain some amount of lead-based paint. A kiddo does not have to chew on paint chips to be exposed, though. Unfortunately, if the house exterior was painted with paint that contained lead, then the ground around the house could have elements of lead in the dirt where little Johnny and Jenny are playing. So we check kiddos with a little finger poke to see if they have elevated lead in their blood. If they do, we run a follow-up confirmatory test. If that also comes back elevated, then the appropriate city works authorities will come by the house to check for where the exposure may be coming from and how best to abate (reduce or remove) it. We are okay, though, with a certain amount of background exposure—meaning that lead up to a certain level is expected just living in a modern society—but the higher the level, the more we want to address it quickly with abatement/avoidance. If the level is really high, then we can treat the kiddo with medication to provide for chelation (binding of the lead) so it can safely be excreted by the body.