THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 27, 1994 TAG: 9407270603
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
LENGTH: Short : 34 lines
As lead additives were phased out of gasoline between 1976 and 1991 and lead seals were removed in canning, the amount of lead circulating in the bloodstreams of Americans dropped by 78 percent, a government study has found.
Public health experts hailed the finding as a major success story.
But another study based on the same data concluded that hundreds of thousands of poor inner-city children are still being exposed to dangerous amounts of lead.
The study found that 8.9 percent of children of all races ages 1 to 5, or about 1.7 million, had levels of lead in their blood that can cause subtle brain damage and learning problems. For black children ages 1 and 2, the percentage with that level, 10 or more micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, was 21.6 percent. The findings, being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, are based on the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a periodic look at the health of Americans. The latest survey is based on tests on more than 13,000 people from 1988 through 1991.
KEYWORDS: LEAD POISONING
by CNB