M9.4 Blog: Heavy Metals

It was sad to read the tragedy in Nigeria. Unfortunately, the tools to look into soil for high concentrations of heavy metals are scarce and hard to detect. Its not until tragedies such as this occur in order to discover something is wrong. In this case heavy concentrations of lead was found on the ground. On a positive note, many children were spared of the same fate those before them endured and lead levels decreased once the children were given chleation treatment. I learned new information on the effects of lead in the body. The article "lead poisoning" goes into depth speaking upon lead and how it affected the Greeks, children, adults and the elderly. It was interesting to to read how lead workers and wine drinkers fell ill to working and drinking lead. Most shocking was to read the sweetness of wine combined with 20 mg of lead per liter! No wonder these people would fall gravely ill and consequently could be speculated to be the cause of the roman empires demise. Finding out childhood lead poisoning was discovered no more than a century ago provides details that children were not taken seriously in this category of poisoning. The symptoms that come along with lead poisoning are behavioral disorders, learning difficulties, acute toxicity and most severe is encephalopathy. Learning about the effects on lead poisoning among the elderly demonstrates lead is stored in the bone and when bone starts to deemineralize and causes decrease in life span.In adults it causes abdominal pain, arthralgia, hypertension, CNS dysfunction, anemia and renal dysfunction. Finally the article states that primary prevention is the way to eliminate lead poisoning among all age groups. 

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 23, 2018 at 8:23 PM

    I was also shocked to learn about people adding lead to their wine to sweeten it! We have known about leads' effects for so many years, yet industry has delayed policies from being developed at the expense of public health. It's so unjust!

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