feedback for "The Truth About Lead"

1. Thank you for this piece. We rent an apartment in an old building, and our manager dismissed us as pretty much crazy when upon moving in we requested that a county lead inspector come in for a lead inspection since we had an eleven-month old (luckily, such inspections are free in our county when there is a baby in the house). Like you, I got overwhelmed by all of the information out there when I first started doing research, and I wish your article had been available to me. Well-done.
   

   posted by : outdoormom on 9/17/2007 at 4:29 PM Flag For Abuse

2. Even more interesting is the story of how you came to have two partners. 
   

   posted by : thetinkers on 9/18/2007 at 7:24 PM Flag For Abuse

3. Check back in late October for that essay, Tinkers! - Ada
   

   posted by : Ada on 9/19/2007 at 10:44 AM Flag For Abuse

4. Our son was diagnosed also at one year with a lead level of 21 and severe anemia. As you say the guilt was intense. I had really tried my hardest to do everything "right"-- strictly breastfed, organic everything. Indeed. I was even grinding my own brown rice to make rice cereal, rather than using tht nasty gerber's. Well, it turned out that the Gerber's would have been a lot better, because it would have given him IRON. He was a preemie, and at higher risk for anemia, but somehow the lame doctors did not tell me this. Anyway, the anemia and the lead are interconnected because the iron in the blood sort of holds the lead at bay, and if there's not enough iron there, the lead can completely take over. Well, it sucked. Three years of hard core iron supplements, every day. Now he's fine, except for the fact that his teeth are totally a mess, and apparently his enamel was malformed because of the lead sucking up all the calcium or something like that. He's almost five now, normal hemoglobin and lead all gone, but has had root canal, which was pure hell.
   And several cavities filled also. We wait in suspense to see about his permanent teeth. Where did he get the lead? We lived in an old house but were insanely careful... the city of Cleveland came out to test everything in sight and there was no lead dust, not lead paint, etc., etc. It was a set of antique chairs that he chewed on-- just once or twice! And then I varnished them all like crazy. Just when he was about 8-10 months old and in peak anemia and teething and crawling. We now have a one-year-old teething and crawling and have learned from our mistakes: daily Floridex with iron, and the chairs have been sent away until further notice.
   
   
   

   posted by : cleverland on 9/26/2007 at 8:42 PM Flag For Abuse

5. We also purchased a old house and live in a one that was even older when our child was a newborn. We did have cracking paint in the one bathroom that I suspected was lead paint, but we never became very concerned about it. A relative who is a structural engineer told us that lead paint is ok, as long as it's been covered up by new paint with in the past few years (almost every rental property is repainted every time a new person moves in) and luckily for us most of the floors, walls and bathroom fixtures were new.

   posted by : dhsredhead on 3/8/2008 at 10:01 PM Flag For Abuse

6. This should be more widely distributed! I know majority of this info I did find through my own research, but you have to read through so many sources that mainly say the same thing. The doctor's office gives out the advice to keep their hands clean and have them eat healthy. Thanks. I never would have done those things otherwise. I wish you had info on lead damage itself though-particularly with children who show no signs of damage at all but still have high lead levels? All 4 of my kids have had high lead levels but all have normal/above average verbal skills and no abnormal problems. We never discovered a source, I assume it's the house itself. But we don't have money to pay for someone to come test things and since we rent a house, any notice from the city goes to our landlords not us. The doctors always say, someone from the city will contact you about a home inspection, but they never do. (I've mentioned this to doctors and people from the insurance company also with no results)I'm not overly worried about it as they seem perfectly fine, but it would be nice to know for sure weather there is anything to watch for or worry about. Anybody know if there are any studies done on kids with elevated lead levels and how they turned out?
   PS. to Cleveland, the iron in those baby cereals is very poorly absorbed by the body, so it probably wouldn't have helped.

   posted by : sajmom on 10/1/2008 at 5:37 PM Flag For Abuse