While there are many routine evaluations that your baby’s health-care provider will conduct at their regular checkups, there’s one that’s very important: evaluating your little one’s risk of having lead poisoning. Roughly four percent of children in the United States have lead poisoning. And while not extremely common, it’s important to prevent and treat any lead exposure your little one may come into contact with. Here’s what you should know about lead poisoning in babies.
How Do I Know if My Baby Has Been Exposed to Lead?
While there typically aren’t any obvious symptoms when a child is exposed to lead, there are risk factors that necessitate testing for lead poisoning. Some children and babies are more likely to be exposed to lead than others, including little ones who:
- Live or spend large amounts of time in a home built before 1978
- Are from a low-income household
- Are immigrants, refugees, or have recently been adopted from a less-developed country
- Live or spend time with someone who works with, or has hobbies that expose them to lead
Your baby’s provider will ask you a series of questions to determine whether your baby is at risk for lead poisoning. Medicaid requires any child enrolled in the program to be tested for lead at both 12 and 24 months of age, or between the ages of two and six if they haven’t received a previously as babies.
How Will My Baby Be Tested for Lead Poisoning?
Blood lead levels are always tested through a blood test, where an amount of blood is taken from your baby’s finger, heel, or arm.
A finger or heel-prick test (also known as a capillary test) is typically the first kind of test used to determine if a child has levels of lead in their blood. To conduct this test, your provider will clean your little one’s heel or finger, then prick them with a tiny needle to collect a small sample of blood. Test results from this kind of test are typically returned in as little as three minutes. However, results may be less accurate than from a venous blood draw.
Venous blood draws are used for more accurate results, or as a secondary test if a capillary test shows any amount of lead in the blood. This type of test draws blood from your little one’s vein, and requires giving a blood sample in a lab. Results from this type of test may take a few days to confirm.
We know that it’s hard to imagine your little one giving blood, but remember, testing for lead levels is an important step in keeping your baby as healthy as possible.
What Happens If My Baby Has Lead Poisoning?
Any amount of lead found in a child’s blood means that they have been exposed to lead, and may be at risk for continuous exposure. The CDC uses a blood lead reference value of 3.5 micrograms per deciliter (μg/dL) as a baseline to identify those with blood lead levels that are higher than usual. However, it’s important to know that there is no safe level of lead in the body. Even low levels of lead have been shown to impact a child’s IQ, ability to pay attention, and academic success.
If your child does have traces of lead in their blood, their provider will work with you to make a treatment plan to lower their lead level. After treatment, your baby’s provider will then retest every few months until their blood lead levels come back within the normal range.
Luckily only a small amount of babies and toddlers have lead levels high enough that they need medicinal treatment. Otherwise, your little one’s provider will encourage you to clean play areas, windows, and floors more often, wash your child’s hands and toys frequently, and feed your little one foods with calcium, iron and vitamin C to help keep lead out of the body. They will also encourage you to find the source of the lead (see below) and take the necessary steps to mitigate lead exposure in your little one’s environment.
How Can I Prevent Lead Blood Poisoning in My Child?
Aside from testing your child for lead if they are considered at-risk, there are a few additional steps you can take to help prevent your baby from being exposed to lead.
- Check your older home’s paint: If you live in a house or dwelling built before 1978, keep crawling babies away from any peeling paint, and test and remove any lead-based paint from all surfaces up to five feet above the floor. It’s important to repaint rooms containing lead-based paint to seal in the lead and mitigate exposure. You can have your home checked by a licensed lead inspector to be sure that you’ve covered any problematic areas.
- Take care when remodeling: If you’re doing any remodeling or in-depth house projects, seal off any rooms under construction with sheets of heavy plastic to protect the rest of your household.
- Remove your shoes: If you live in an area with higher levels of lead exposure, due to old homes or lots of older homes being remodeled, it’s a smart idea for those entering the home to wipe their feet and take their shoes off to prevent tracking lead inside.
- Clean often: Regularly mop floors, and wash windows and windowsills in older homes and buildings to prevent the buildup up dust particles that may contain traces of lead.
- Cover bare soil: To prevent children from playing in lead-contaminated soil, cover any bare patches of your yard with grass, mulch or wood chips.
- Wash before meals: Wash your little one’s hands and face before all meals (particularly for crawling and walking aged little ones).
Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health is committed to eliminating childhood lead poisoning in Lancaster County. That’s why we launched Lead-Free Families, a comprehensive program that helps to identify and remediate lead hazards in Lancaster County homes. If you are local to the Lancaster area and are concerned about the potential for lead exposure in your home, speak with your child’s provider for testing options and consider applying for the Lead-Free Families program.