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Lead- and Cadmium-Induced Toxicity on Environment and Human Health with Special Reference to a Peri-Urban Ramsar Site of India
Published in Rohini Prasad, Manoj Kumar Jhariya, Arnab Banerjee, Advances in Sustainable Development and Management of Environmental and Natural Resources, 2021
Joystu Dutta, Tirthankar Sen, Tarun Kumar Thakur, Abhijit Mitra
Pb bioaccumulation in the bodies of women and children and its potential short- and long-term repercussions are well researched (Landrigan, 2002; Shannon, 2003; Bellinger, 2005; Karri et al., 2008) in the scientific literature. The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised adequate concerns on pediatric Pb toxicities across the globe, especially in economically disadvantaged countries. The vulnerability trends of Pb toxicity in children have raised considerable attention worldwide. Parents are very often the primary carriers of Pb dust into their homes from the workplace (Glorennec, 2007; Rubin and Strayer, 2008; Watts, 2009; Glorennec, 2010; Oulhote, 2013). Occupational Pb exposure is well documented and is studied across a bouquet of aspects and circumstances (Staudinger and Roth, 1998; Sanborn et al., 2002; Needleman, 2004; Barbosa, 2005; Patrick, 2006; Woolf et al., 2007; Kosnett, 2007; Rossi, 2008; Watts, 2009; Grant, 2009). The innate curiosity, innocence, and lack of basic personal hygiene concerns of children provoke hand to mouth exposure of lead. This accelerates magnified manifestation of a pediatric psychological disorder named pica. Pica is characterized by intense cravings to eat inedible food items. Fetal exposure to Pb cannot be undermined as well. Expecting mothers involuntary take up Pb as a result of prolonged exposure in ill-developed infrastructures which generally flout norms of occupational health and safety management systems.
Resurgent lead poisoning and renewed public attention towards environmental social justice issues: A review of current efforts and call to revitalize primary and secondary lead poisoning prevention for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children within the U.S.
Published in International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2018
In the United States (U.S.), childhood lead poisoning caused by environmental exposures has been well-documented as a continual public health problem since the 20th century. Adverse neuropsychological consequences from lead sequelae begin in early gestational development and persist across the lifespan [1,2]. Over the last 50 years, animal biomedical and human clinical research regarding environmental lead exposures on neurodevelopment have provided substantial and fundamental evidence defining lead as a neurotoxicant [3]. Contemporaneous with the research done on lead poisoning during that half-century in the U.S., critical public health legislation facilitated the removal of large amounts of lead from the environment in the 1970s (i.e. the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act [PL 91–695 and PL 93–151] to address children engaging in Pica and eating paint chips, as well as the Clean Air Act [PL 88–206] that was directed at removing leaded gasoline) [4–8]. Despite these laws reducing high blood lead levels (HBLLs) in children through conscientious and responsible public health efforts, today children in the U.S. remain continually at-risk for low blood lead level (LBLL) exposures that are still deemed to have concerning neurodevelopmental effects as the brain is particularly sensitive to low-levels of lead [3]. Currently, LBLL environmental exposures are acquired from residual industrial byproducts such as but not limited to: lead-painted toys [9,10]; lead-contaminated candies [11–14] and their wrappers; [15,16] unabated/improperly abated housing when renovating pre-1978 homes containing lead paint, lead-soldered and/or plumbing delivering water to pre-1978 homes, schools, and others institutions [17]. More recently, events such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Gold King Mine waste-water spill on 5 August 2015 in Silverton, Colorado [18] and Flint, Michigan’s 2014 water supply re-routing program catastrophe [19,20] further demonstrate continued public health threats of environmental lead exposures that exceed the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) actionable levels (i.e. ≥ 5 µg/dL). Thus, warranting further investigation into the causes, sources of exposure(s), the associated public health impacts/concerns, and more importantly the environmental social justice issues faced by surrounding populations of children across the U.S. defined as most-at-risk for resurgent lead poisoning.