Is Brain Damage from Lead Permanent?

 

Is lead poisoning brain damage permanent?

 

Clients frequently asked me whether or not I have been able to prove in court that lead poisoning brain damage is permanent.  Unfortunately many studies have demonstrated that the negative impact of lead exposure on IQ and other neurobehavioral outcomes is permanent.  The following is a summary of some of the key metal literature which we rely on to prove that lead poisoning brain damage is permanent.

 

Medical studies have examined whether children's school performance is related to their exposure to lead.  These studies have demonstrated that many academic skills and performance suffer from what exposure.  These studies have also demonstrated that for school skills and performance are persistent problems which resulted in learning disabilities and a very high rate of failure to graduate from high school.  These studies also demonstrate that these academic problems have an enduring and negative impact on success in real life.

 

In one of the most important research projects in the field Dr. Herbert Needleman followed a group of children who had been exposed to lead.  He published a medical article in the New England Journal of medicine providing his findings of an 11 year or follow-up for these lead poisoned children.  The children with the highest lead exposures were seven times more likely to drop out of high school. Higher lead levels were also associated with lower class rank, increased absenteeism, lower scores on vocabulary and grammatical reasoning tests, significantly slower finger-tapping speed, longer reaction times, poorer hand-I coordination, and lower reading scores.  These impairments of reading skills were sufficiently extensive to be labeled reading disability (indicated by scores to grades below the expected scores).

  

Very recent studies have used cutting edge diagnostic procedures such as MRI and MRS to assess direct measures of brain damage.  These studies have given strong support to the conclusion that brain damage from lead poisoning is permanent.  In the fall of 2006 and important paper was published in the journal pediatrics providing stunning visual representations of the brain damage from lead poisoning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There have also been efforts to determine whether brain damage from lead can be reversed by providing chelation therapy to children.  Regrettably, these studies show that very little can be done medically for children once they are lead poisoned.  These studies point to the need to undertake aggressive steps to eliminate any chance of lead exposure for young children.  In addition, these studies have demonstrated that brain damage from lead does not stop occurring as children get older.  To the contrary, even lead exposure for school age children has been demonstrated to result in permanent loss of intelligence.

 

The United States Environmental Protection Agency published an exhaustive review of lead literature and the fall of 2006.  This document includes extensive review of the literature regarding the toxic effects of lead in children.  For a copy of this document including its review and summary of the toxic effects of lead, a visit the EPA's document retrieval website at http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?deid=158823

 

For a full bibliography of all of the studies that I have collected on the permanency of lead poisoning brain damage please feel free to contact me by e-mail or through this website.