Help Prevent Lead Poisoning in Your Home

What Lead Does to Us

Adults absorb approximately 5-15% of ingested lead and retain less than 5%. Children absorb about 50% of ingested lead. Lead distributes in the blood, soft tissues and bones with blood and soft tissues comprising the active pool and bones representing the storage pool. The half-life of lead in blood is about 35 days and in bones it is 5 years to decades depending on the types and location of the bones. Total body burden for children under age 10 is estimated to be less than 0.1 mg/kg but it will increase with a person's age to levels ranging from 1.4 - 5.7 mg/kg in an adult who has reached the later decades of life.

Lead poisioning

Each year in the United States 310,000 1- to 5-year-old kids are found to have unsafe levels of lead in their blood, which can lead to a wide range of symptoms, from headaches and stomach pain to behavioral problems and anemia. Lead can also affect a child's developing brain.

Places in Your Home with Lead

In this photo is a stained glass item. A lead wrap is squished around each piece then soldered with lead to hold it together.

What You Should Know About Lead Based Paint in Your Home: Safety Alert

Lead-based paint is a major source of lead poisoning for children and can also affect adults. In children, lead poisoning can cause irreversible brain damage and can impair mental functioning. It can retard mental and physical development and reduce attention span. It can also retard.....

'Tis the Season to Beware of Lead in Christmas Lights

Whether exposure to lead in Christmas lights affects blood lead levels in humans is unknown, though research increasingly shows that any exposure to lead -- especially by children -- is hazardous to health in that it is implicated in a wide range of health concerns," said Joseph Laquatra, a professor, who led the study. "No standards exist for lead content in this product, and no protocols exist for conducting tests on it."

Sources of Lead ... Ceramic Dishes & Pots

Lead can leach out from the surface of the dish and get into foods or beverages. Then, when the food is eaten, the lead gets into the body. The amount of lead that leaches from a dish depends on how the dish is used and what kind of food is put in it.

techniques to reduce residential lead dust on carpet and upholstery

However, the wipe data showed that the mean upholstery lead loading was not significantly different from the mean carpet lead loading (Table 3), indicating that upholstered furniture, before any cleaning, can be just as important a source of lead exposure via surface contact, even though the total lead stores are far less.

Lead in our Favorite .. Chocolate

Also food and water

Chocolate makers sued for lead content of products

The chocolate manufacturers dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous and alarmist, saying the amount of lead and cadmium in products like candy bars and hot chocolate mix is no more than in other foods because the metals occur naturally in soil.......

Sources of Lead in Cocoa and Chocolate

The article "Lead Contamination in Cocoa and Cocoa Products: Isotopic Evidence of Global Contamination" (Rankin et al. 2005) has even attracted international attention (crienglish.com 2005) because of an interview that Rankin granted a reporter from Science News (Raloff 2005). Raloff's report makes it generally known that Rankin et al.'s study was commissioned by the American Environmental Safety Institute

Lead Contamination in Cocoa and Cocoa Products: Isotopic Evidence of Global Contamination

Lead concentrations of manufactured cocoa and chocolate products were as high as 230 and 70 ng/g, respectively, which are consistent with market-basket surveys that have repeatedly listed lead concentrations in chocolate products among the highest reported for all foods......

Lead Contamination of Food and water

Lead is a naturally occurring bluish-gray metal found in small amounts in the earth. It has no special taste or smell and can be found in all parts of our environment (3). Human activities such as mining, manufacturing, and the burning of fossil fuels are the major sources of environmental lead. The major sources of lead in drinking water are lead plumbing

Lead in Old Stuff

One of the problems with people worrying about the economy is that more people are going to buy old stuff at yard sales. Plus there are those people who sell antiques and other old items buying it and keeping the stuff at home.

This is an ad from an old 1936 magazine. To be able to hold that red color, there is probably lead.

The Safety Of Newsprint Bedding

There are three ways ink can have contact with the human body. There is dermal absorption (through the skin), inhalation of ink particles into the respiratory tract (breathing), or ingestion through the mouth and into the digestive system (eating).

Lead! Lead Everywhere!

Research links deer hunting to lead poisoning in eagles

That all changed with the news last spring that traces of lead from hunters' bullets were showing up in venison samples tested from food shelves in Minnesota and North Dakota.

Lead in Garden Soils

Soil can be contaminated with lead from several other sources-industrial sites, industrial sludge with heavy metals, until recently from auto emissions, old lead plumbing pipes or even old orchard sites in production when lead arsenate was in use. From a gardener's viewpoint, lead contamination is forever.

Sources, Levels and Movements of Lead in the Environment

Lead occurs naturally in low concentrations in all rocks, soils and dusts, usually ranging from 2 to 200 parts per million. The total amount of lead in the earth's crust is estimated to be 3.1 x 1014 tonnes. Some soils have relatively high concentrations of lead, where the underlying parent rock has significant lead content. Lead contents of waters are generally low, but significant amounts of lead-rich dusts and vapours are carried in the air

Guidance Document for Lead in Shellfish

This document is designed to assist local and state health officials in their deliberations concerning the possible need to either issue consumption advisories or to close waters for fishing because of excessive lead contamination.

CPSC Requirements of New Children's Product Safety Laws Taking Effect

Also discussions from Ebay sellers

Update, the congress has moved the date back to next year, feb. 10th 2010, but you are still liable. Congress war on toys.

Read the law carefully!

I have noticed that resellers do not read the whole thing. My attorney felt it was very clear that all toy sellers will have to comply.


The second paragraph..Sellers of used children's products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits

Then it says it again... law does not require resellers to test children's products in inventory

Then it says.... However, resellers cannot sell children's products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead
...and Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or criminal penalties

New Children's Product Safety Laws

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In February 2009, new requirements of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) take effect. Manufacturers, importers and retailers are expected to comply with the new Congressionally-mandated laws. Beginning February 10, 2009, children's products cannot be sold if they contain more than 600 parts per million (ppm) total lead. Certain children's products manufactured on or after February 10, 2009 cannot be sold if they contain more than 0.1% of certain specific phthalates or if they fail to meet new mandatory standards for toys.

H.R. 4040, the Consumer Protection Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) signed in

Lots of upset sellers and lots of info.

CPSIA LAW - NO RESALE OF TOYS AFTER 02/2009

From the toy sellers forum. One instance of a toy show in Portland being patroled and sellers being shut down. If youa re a collector of old toys, you may soon be out of luck.

Updated, date moved up one year

For now, Grandma has dodged a bullet. On February 10, makers of children's products faced onerous new regulations that would have criminalized a thriving cottage industry of handmade crafters, and threatened a vast section of the economy already gripped by a deep recession.