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Dec 20, 2017·3 min read
Children’s Lead Exposure: A Multimedia Modeling Analysis to Guide Public Health Decision-Making

Children’s Lead Exposure: A Multimedia Modeling Analysis to Guide Public Health Decision-Making

Children’s Lead Exposure: A Multimedia Modeling Analysis to Guide Public Health Decision-Making

Quick Answer: Kids get lead exposure from a few places: their drinking water (10-30% in homes with lead pipes), dust in the house (from old lead paint breaking down), soil (especially in city areas near old factories), and even food (grown in bad soil or processed with lead). Advanced water treatment, like reverse osmosis, really helps with water quality here. AMPAC USA’s commercial and industrial systems are built to tackle these exact water treatment problems, and we have the certified, documented performance to prove it.

\nAuthor Full Names: Zartarian, Valerie; Xue, Jianping; Tornero-Velez, Rogelio; Brown, James\nSource:ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES, 125 (9):10.1289/EHP1605SEP 2017\nLanguage:English\n\nAbstract: BACKGROUND: People are worried about lead in drinking water and other sources. Think about the Flint, Michigan, water crisis or the lead in soil problems in East Chicago, Indiana. In 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) suggested setting a “health-based, household action level” for lead in drinking water, focusing on how it affects children.\n\nOBJECTIVES: Our main goal was to create a modeling method that links exposure and dose. We wanted to figure out what lead levels in drinking water keep kids’ blood lead levels (BLLs) low, considering lead from water, soil, dust, food, and air. We also wanted to check our model’s estimates against real blood lead data, see how much each source contributed, and pinpoint the most important things that go into the model.\n\nMETHODS: We developed a modeling approach using the EPA’s Stochastic Human Exposure and Dose Simulation (SHEDS)-Multimedia and Integrated Exposure Uptake and Biokinetic (IEUBK) models. We used all the available data. For young children across the U.S., this analysis simulated exposures from many sources and estimated how much each source added to BLLs for different age groups and across all population levels.\n\nRESULTS: Our modeled BLLs matched up well with national BLLs (with only a 0-23% difference). Our analysis showed how important ingesting soil and dust is, and how much lead kids get from those sources. Drinking water was also a big pathway, especially for babies.\n\nCONCLUSIONS: This method helps us understand more about the connection between lead in drinking water and children’s BLLs. It can help guide national health standards for lead and local public health decisions. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP1605.\n\nThe post Children’s Lead Exposure: A Multimedia Modeling Analysis to Guide Public Health Decision-Making appeared first on Facts About Water.\n\nSource: Water Feed

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