ATLANTA — For the first time in 20 years, a federal panel is urging the government to lower the threshold for lead poisoning in children. If adopted, hundreds of thousands more children could be diagnosed with lead poisoning. Too much lead is harmful to developing brains and can mean a lower IQ.
Recent research persuaded panel members that children could be harmed from lead levels in their blood that are lower than the current standard, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
While the number of cases has been falling, health officials think as many as 250,000 children have the problem, many of those undiagnosed. The proposed change could take it to 450,000 cases.
The recommendation might be difficult to implement. In many places, it’s up to city and county health departments to provide many of the services for lead-poisoned kids, and those departments have lost more than 34,000 jobs in the past three years. Meanwhile, Congress just slashed the CDC’s lead program from more than $30 million to $2 million.
