“Lead poisoning remains the number one preventable environmental health concern for children in America today. ” 5/11/11 letter from Louise M. Slaughter & Robert A. Brady, Members of Congress

From a parent’s perspective, many holidays have hazards to worry about. Who hasn’t picked up the paper during the winter holidays and seen a story of Christmas tree fire that destroyed a family home? And everyone has heard the Halloween tale (an “urban myth”?) of razor blades placed in apples.

While no one wants to focus on worries in the midst of celebrating, as hip, modern, “green” parents it’s our job to be informed. There’s so much information available – with the Internet at our fingertips, it’s our responsibility to know as much as we can about everything – right?

From the perspective of a parent of children with lead poisoning – an environmental illness that causes permanent damage to the brain and associated learning disabilities and other concerns – every holiday is seen through a slightly different lens…

What sets lead hazards apart from other concerns is that—as with nearly all lead hazards—exposure to holiday lead hazards is totally preventable. In fact  – childhood lead poisoning is the most expensive* preventable environmental illness in terms of the impact on our country.  It’s easy to protect your children from the many sources if you merely stay alert and do your “green parent homework”.

Following are some my rules for keeping my children safe during Halloween.

The greatest concern is with the items marked as “not intended for children.” If an item is sold as an adult costume or a house decoration it is likely not regulated and can – in some cases – legally have unsafe amounts of lead [and other toxic chemicals!]

• Adult costume elements (masks, swords, scepters, costume jewelry, etc.) These items can be painted with lead paint.  The soft rubber items (like that favorite gorilla mask!) can actually have lead throughout the material as a fire retardant and as a chemical used to make the rubber supple.
  Alternative:  Homemade costumes (using safe art supplies like natural fabrics and paper mache) or purchasing costumes intended for children, marked nontoxic and regulated for lead (avoid items manufactured in countries with a history of regulatory non-compliance.)
• Decorative elements for your home. These items can (legally!) be painted with lead paint or treated with lead to be fire retardant or pliable. I avoid store-bought rubber spiders, tombstones, skulls, and any plastic, cast resin or foam yard ornaments.
  Alternatives: consider making these decorations yourself. Come on—what’s more fun than carving a real pumpkin?! With homemade decorations, your children will have more fun with the process and pride in the end result!  We paint our windows with non-toxic window paints; the children love turning old sheets into tiny ghosts to hang from our trees and then there’s the homemade scarecrow on the porch and construction paper cutout bats and pumpkins!
• Holiday Lighting Strings of holiday lighting are considered “not intended for children” – most even come in packages with “California Prop 65” warnings.** Holiday lighting strands can be especially toxic because not only are they often manufactured with lead (to keep the plastic or rubber strand supple) but they can also be coated with 100% bio-available powdered lead “dust” applied as a fire retardant(!!) ***
  My advice: if you must use holiday lighting, know that it can be extremely toxic to children. Make sure they do not handle it at all. For adults stringing up lighting – wear gloves or wash your hands thoroughly afterwards. Alternatives: We decorate with homemade decorative strands – paper and string, and seasonal greenery (strands of crab apples and paper bats, etc.), and we use candles with lead-free wicks in our pumpkins.

Enjoy child-safe celebrating!

For more information on avoiding lead hazards during the holidays check out the “Holiday” page at  http://www.mychildrenhaveleadpoisoning.com

*http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/tmsh-eco050411.php
**http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65.html
***http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-08/lead-in-most-u-s-tree-lights-poses-hazard-for-kids-group-says.html

Parents often assume that schools are safe. They imagine there must be a set of Federal regulations in place that ensure our children are not exposed to potent environmental toxins in their schools and daycares – where they spend most of their time outside of the home.

I discovered the hard way that this is not the case.

For the first two years after my boys were lead poisoned, I closely monitored their Blood Lead Levels (BLL).  It was important to observe their BLLs going down and this also helped me to catch incidents where they increased. One of these incidents was with my older son…

We had decided to send the boys to a private school. The tuition was expensive, but we felt that after everything they had been through, a nurturing academic environment was essential.

When we first started there, I noticed the old building’s many large windows had all been replaced – a great sign!  It wasn’t until A.J. began kindergarten that I noticed the windows’ original exterior trim was covered with old, peeling paint!

It was then—about two months into the school year—that I had Cole retested. His BLL had gone up 60% since the level we had taken at the beginning of the school year.! We now lived in a lead-safe home and the only potential source of lead exposure we could find was the school.

I rallied together a group of parents and we hired a hazard assessor to do some preliminary testing and produce a report to take to the school board with recommendations for further testing and remediation. I knew there were some hazards—I could see them—but I was not prepared for the test results: the floor at the front entry of the school tested positive with a level of more than 7,000 micrograms of lead dust per square foot  [the level of lead dust on the floor that is considered hazardous for children is 40 micrograms of lead per square foot]! I was horrified. How had I not seen this hazard sooner?  How could an expensive private school have hazards of this magnitude?

It was then that I trained my eyes to really look for potential hazards—both obvious and more subtle — in public and private children’s spaces everywhere I went. A public daycare center two blocks from my house tested positive with window sill levels of 23,000 micrograms of lead per square foot!

As a result of these experiences, I contacted my State representative and drafted a law to protect children in Oregon from lead hazards in school.  This is HB 2715 and is currently before the legislature.

I share this with you because it illustrates something so profound—the motto of Healthy Child Healthy World actually—“No one can do everything, Everyone can do something.”

What you can do:

1. Find out if there is a law in your state protecting children from lead hazards in school. Some states (like MA) have progressive, aggressive legislation protecting children from environmental hazards in schools.
2. If there isn’t a law, contact me – perhaps I can help you write one for your state. Parents unite—we can do this together!
3. Look around your children’s schools and daycares. Is there any peeling paint?  Have it tested (if necessary, send me a note and I will send you a free 3M LeadCheck®  test kit to test any suspected lead paint on your school or daycare.)
4. Keep your eyes open for other sources of lead in your children’s school – particularly recycled older building materials (doors and windows) earmarked for use in “art projects” or “building projects” in wood shop or other areas of the school (as “retro objects d’art”).
5. Lead in tile is not regulated so also be wary of mosaic projects especially when small children are involved.
6. Find out about lead in water fountains—that can be removed with properly specified (and regularly maintained) water filters. Is anyone in your school system is managing the oversight of changing these filters?
7. Educate your school and your teachers about the concern. Encourage alternatives for art projects. Sharing information makes all the difference in the world. Check out my personal advocacy website for more links and information

Rule number one in keeping a lead-safe home is: “Please take your shoes off outside and leave them there—no exceptions!”

We have a lovely wooden bench on the porch that is long enough for everyone to sit while taking off their shoes. Many cultures have practiced this custom for centuries.  From Japan to Austria it’s the custom to take your shoes off at the door. Some families even keep a basket of slippers inside the door for guests. It’s a nice custom—it’s civilized and distinguishes a boundary between the chaos of the outside world and the haven of the home.

Taking your shoes off outside is also the best way to prevent tracking dirt laden with environmental toxins into your home.

While a grandparent who grew up on a farm might say “a little dirt is good for you – don’t worry about it!”, these days you really have to think twice about tracking the incredibly array of substances that cling to the soles of our shoes into our homes – especially if you live in a densely populated urban area. It is initially hard to understand that it only takes a microscopic amount of lead dust to poison a child—consider that just two “sugar packets”’ worth of lead dust would be enough to contaminate an entire football field to a level that is hazardous to children!

In Portland, Oregon there is remodeling everywhere; from homes being repainted to whole buildings being torn down, entire neighborhoods are being redone. Many don’t realize that much of this renovation activity is not regulated and can [legally] put clouds of toxic dust into the air.  Just watch any footage of the demolition of a building—you can see the expanding clouds of dust enveloping everything in the neighborhood. It doesn’t take much to imagine how this impacts the levels of lead and other toxic substances in the areas where children spend most of their time.

While these realizations can produce an initial impulse to panic – to give in to the thought that the toxins in our environment are inescapable and that there is “nothing you can do about it,” panic doesn’t reduce risk—actions do.

What you can do is be responsible for keeping environmental toxins like lead out of your child’s environment. You can make sure their home, school and playgrounds are and remain lead free. If you monitor those areas it will make a difference.

So implement a “shoes off” policy (as a great start) and here’s some other advice:

1. Don’t clean or dust “dry”– it spreads lead around! Use a wet-wipe method instead. We use disposable wipes because they do not spread the lead microdust around.  They are great for windows’ sills & troughs, stairs, and cleaning up any dust that accumulates in the house.  (Also, consider having a carpet-free home!)
2. Test your local playground equipment for lead. If you need a test kit, contact my foundation.
3. Notice if there is any peeling paint anywhere in your child’s school or daycare – take a careful look at doors, windows and baseboards. Find out if the school has been tested, and if not – contact me and I will help you make sure your school gets tested and is safe for children!
4. If you work in the construction industry, create a way to change your clothes (and ideally shower) before coming into the home. Every day children are poisoned by toxins a parent brings home on their work clothes—and that’s 100% preventable.
5. This may sound trivial, but avoid the temptation to stand nearby with your kids to watch a building demolition—or remodeling/construction of any kind. Buildings being torn down are usually older and have lead paint. Soil around these buildings is often contaminated with lead from decades-long deposits of lead-laden auto exhaust. Especially while your children are very small, watch those activities from a distance  – or better yet – watch the videos on YouTube!
6. If you want more detailed information about soil contamination and its potential to impact children, or studies about how lead dust impacts the health and well being of children, Google the work of (research scientists) Howard Mielke and Herbert Needleman and of (pediatric physician) Dr. Bruce Lanphear.

If someone were to ask me, “What has been the most unexpected subject you have learned about in your advocacy work?”, I’d have to say lead paint hazards in the context of the Urban Chicken movement!

“Shoot the messenger.”

Backyard urban chicken farmers are proud to be doing something good for the environment and for their family. Keeping backyard chickens is viewed as a positive element of traditional homesteading, sustainability, and independence, so when (in an effort to protect the children of these urban chicken farmers) I cited research that suggested that some may be unknowingly feeding toxic eggs to their children – the inquiry…um…ruffled a few feathers!

I have since gotten so many inquiries about the subject that I have dedicated an entire area of my website to articles and links regarding the concern of urban chickens and lead paint!

Background/ What is the concern?

Historically, farm buildings were painted with non-toxic “milk paint.” Farmers have long known the damage that lead paint can do to their livestock. Many farm animals’ systems are more delicate than those of humans, so exposure to lead paint can quickly result in death – not a risk a farmer can afford.

When you take animals off of the farm and into the city (and away from the wisdom passed down among generations of farmers), you can end up introducing them into an environment with lots of hazards. Not only can there be deteriorating lead paint on homes, but renovations may have contaminated the soil.  The problem is compounded when urban “farmers” put their coops up against their house (or an older garage). It turns out chickens have a metaphorical “sweet tooth”—studies have found that chickens gravitate towards sweet tasting things and lead paint is sweet, so if they are near a source of lead paint (like the side of a building that also happens to be the wall of their coop) they will actually eat it directly off the wall and peck paint chips out of the soil!

In the scene in the Mom on a Mission video  showing me knocking on a neighbor’s door and testing the woman’s green exterior wall, the reason she asked me to test that wall was that her chickens had been pecking the paint off of that wall specifically and she was concerned it might contain lead.  It looked like a newer application of paint to me, so I was, in fact, very surprised to see that it instantly tested positive for lead… the chickens had gravitated right to it!]

This is a problem because the lead can end up in the yolks of the eggs and can cause a very real threat to the children who eat them.  Here’s a link to a page of my site that has links to referenced studies discussing the impact of lead paint consumption by chickens:

What to do if you have a pre-1978 home and backyard chickens:

1. get your soil tested for lead
2. get your eggs tested for lead (if you cannot find a lab that will test your eggs for lead in your area, please e-mail me and I will find you one: leadsafe@me.com)
3. If the tests come back positive don’t eat the eggs; move your coop, replace your soil with uncontaminated soil
4. NOTE: while building a coop out of recycled doors and windows from a building component salvage store might seem like an environmentally conscious choice – please test these things before you bring them home.  If they test positive for lead, leave them at the store!

When I talk to people about lead poisoning they always ask about toys. The recent concern over lead in toys has brought the issue to the forefront of American parental consciousness.

As a mother of children who experienced acute lead poisoning as babies, I take great care in choosing their toys.

After my boys were poisoned by our home remodel (in late 2005) – to reduce the risk of any further exposure, I got rid of most of their toys: die-cast cars, figurines, and toys made in countries with known questionable manufacturing processes.  I also threw out “antiques” and toys that had painted decorations. (A boomerang my niece brought back from Australia as a gift tested positive for lead paint!)

Then we went out and bought all new Thomas the Tank Engine trains and tracks – excited about the possibility that my kids would be engaging in creative play with safe new toys from a European company.  A short time later  – the Thomas trains were recalled for lead paint!

Lesson learned!  You never know…

What I do:

1. I follow the CPSCIA notices and toy recalls.

2. If it has any paint on it – we avoid it.

3. We engage in activities that are not toy-centric, walking to the park, hiking, riding bikes; indoor activities include baking, drawing, costume play, and playing musical instruments, making home-made play dough (kids love warm play dough!

4. We avoid toys made of soft rubber or plastic because lead is often used as a stabilizer for soft plastics.

5. Most importantly (and I’m glad I don’t have girls for this one!) we avoid costume jewelry. Most costume jewelry is not sold as “intended for children”.  If it is sold as “not intended for children” it is not regulated and can legally contain unsafe levels of lead. Lead and other toxic metals from contaminated costume jewelry can also end up being directly “ingested” with the normal hand-to-mouth activity of children. My advice: Sterling silver. Pieces can be about the same price as a costume piece and can be so much more exciting for a child (to have something made of real silver!)  Please avoid small metal charms, crystals and painted beads from foreign countries especially, as those items can have very high lead content and can be easily swallowed—with tragic consequences.

6. To increase the chances that a toy is safe (without actually having it XRF-tested) – buy European toys (verify that they are not only designed in Europe, but also manufactured in Europe – where toxicity standards are far stricter than in the U.S. and many non-EU countries.)

Check out the toy page of my site for more information and links:

Our Foundation is working on acquiring an XRF analyzer for toy testing so we can offer free toy-testing events around the country – so “stay tuned!” and ask to be added to our mailing list to learn about toy testing events near you.

We’re all following this “Occupy Wall Street” movement now to some degree. You can’t avoid it. Even if you’re someone like me – a busy, working mom with four young boys – who often can’t find the time to watch the news or even pick up a newspaper on a regular basis, it’s part of my consciousness. (Here in Portland, Oregon – if I still weren’t following the “Occupy Wall Street” phenomenon, I couldn’t miss the “Occupy Portland” event!)

It can’t be overlooked (it’s staring us all in the face actually) that this is happening as a result of the financial crisis our country is in—even bigger than “country”—our society – the fabric that is made of individual flesh-and-blood families and our social, professional, personal, financial and other interactions.

For one family in Portland, Oregon (formerly “upper middle class”/”white collar” /”successful”) this financial crisis is very tangible with constant daily reminders…

Have you ever had a day where you got a gas shutoff notice, an electric shutoff notice, a water shutoff notice and a “foreclosure acceleration” letter all on the same day?

Our own family’s financial crisis started with a medical “event” six years ago, in 2005. This was an event that was 100% preventable – yet one that has cost us personally more than $200,000 (plus interest)!  More important—this event compromised the integrity of our most precious resource: the health and well being of our children.

Our boys were poisoned by the work of a painting contractor we hired to repaint the exterior of our lovely home in the upscale Historic Irvington neighborhood of Portland. Before the boys were poisoned we felt relatively fortunate. While we had a mortgage – we finally had no other debt! We had steady income and we had a resource we thought was more valuable than anything (at the time) equity in our home.

We had no concept of the scope of challenges that would unfold in our future. Childhood lead poisoning causes permanent, irreversible brain damage (literally; the growing brain of a young child absorbs the lead in the place of calcium, so the brain is damaged and no longer functions as designed.)  When children are exposed very young, it causes learning disabilities, behavioral issues, immune system compromises and a host of other related medical impacts that can present challenges for the rest of their life (A.D.D., A.D.H.D., Autism Spectrum symptoms, Dyslexia, Sensory Processing Disorder and more.)

Childhood lead poisoning costs the United States an estimated $50.9 Billion dollars in increased health care costs alone*. It costs the State of Oregon (just as one example) an estimated $878,000,000 annually in the lost earning potential of the children poisoned**.  Childhood lead poisoning is often cited as the most costly wholly preventable environmental illness today.  The numbers are conservative estimates, based on Federal statistics (that many research scientists say are outdated, “spun” downward and only represent a fraction of the true scope of the growing problem).

Ironically, when we got the call that informed us that our boys were poisoned, we were hastily uprooted (the doctor called late in the evening and told us to “leave with your children and take only the clothes on your backs”!) and in the end, we were never to “occupy” our beloved home again.

I write this rather dramatic introduction as a cautionary tale. It is my personal goal to create a Lead Safe America – to make sure that what happened to us and our children will not happen to you and your children – your nieces, nephews, friends, neighbors and grandchildren.

In the following blog posts this week I will be sharing with you some of what I have learned – including practical tips on what you can do to protect your children from being poisoned by lead with simple actions and awareness focusing on two areas – your child’s home and their school and/or daycare.

In the meantime, please check out my websites – both my new nonprofit foundation’s site www.leadsafeamerica.org and my personal advocacy site http://www.mychildrenhaveleadpoisoning.com for more information, and don’t hesitate to contact me directly if you have questions about lead in your home or if you would like to know how you can help protect children from being poisoned by this wholly preventable environmental illness.

* Study by Leonardo Trasande, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/tmsh-eco050411.php

** Oregon Environmental Council, Price of Pollution Report, http://www.oeconline.org/our-work/healthier-lives/priceofpollution