Lead Poisoning Health Video

Video Transcript

JUSTIN C.K. DAVIS, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Justin Davis and today, I'm going to tell you about lead poisoning. Lead is a very soft metal that is found in the environment naturally in very small quantities. Because of some of its properties and it's easy to work with, it has been used in the past by people and many products that we have around our daily lives such as pencil lead, paint, old lead pipes, and gasoline. Today, we understand that it represents many health hazards and have removed it from most everyday products. However because it's a metal that lasts in the environment for a long time and can still be found in many products, particularly in old homes or near old highways where there used to be leaded gasoline. The problem arises when lead is ingested into the body particularly when it accumulates into high amounts in the tissue, it can cause symptoms. These symptoms are particularly dangerous and harmful in babies and you children, particularly because they are still developing. Some of the more dangerous and common symptoms from lead poisoning can be the following: you may have irritability, loss of appetite, weight loss, sluggishness, anemia with unusual pallor, and learning difficulties or behavioral problems. Adults can also have symptoms of lead poisoning, although it's a little less common and often more subtle but these symptoms can be similar. The treatment for lead poisoning is primarily to remove yourself from the environment where there is excessive lead or to remove the lead from the environment if you know that it is there. If there is only a small amount of lead in your body, your body will naturally get rid of it once you remove the other lead from the environment. However in cases where there's a lot of lead in your body, sometimes you'll need special medicines called chelating agents which are agents that you can take sometimes by mouth and sometimes they need to be injected intravenously. They help attached on to the lead and take it out of the tissue back into the blood stream where your body can then excrete in the urine and bowel movements. Preventing lead poisoning can be difficult because it's usually invisible to us, but it's very important to know your environment, particularly if you are in an area where there are used to be housing projects or perhaps you are in an older building or an older house. It's important to have professional come out and screen your environment and make sure that there's not excessive lead in the form of paint, maybe it can sometimes become in a very small particle and getting to the dust, it can be in dirt and certain playground. So it's important to know your environment and avoid having lead poisoning in the first place. Luckily again, the body is able to recover typically from lead poisoning when it's found and also because we have recognized the dangers of lead poisoning. It's regularly screened for in children these days. So, what you can do to make sure that your children don't get lead poisoning is to go to your doctor' appointment for their regular health well-child screening exams, where we will test them to make sure they are not anemic and they don't have lead.