Lead and Kidneys

The recent news about lead exposure from city water in Flint, Michigan, has renewed many people's concerns about an environmental cause of kidney disease. For years, extraordinary efforts have been made to eradicate environmental lead exposure by eliminating lead based gasoline, stopping the sale of lead based paints, removing lead based paint from older homes, and monitoring of blood lead levels in children and the public by local health departments. All of these activities have resulted in consistently fewer reports of lead-associated kidney disease. Environmental exposure from lead in water has only recently been recognized as a public health hazard. Let's refresh our familiarity with lead-induced illness from long term exposure. Lead toxicity is usually recognized in two populations: young children and populations prone to chronic kidney disease (CKD). Lead exposure in young children is most often a result of ingesting lead in paint dust or chips or inhaling it through the air from leaded gasoline and associated environmental air pollution. This acute lead poisoning leads to neurologic toxicity (especially in developing brains and nerves) and is often associated with anemia and intellectual deficits that will only be apparent years later. This type of toxicity comes from high levels of exposure that is rare in the United States today with the reduction in the usual sources of environmental exposures such as air pollution and lead paint. Long term chronic exposure to...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news