Can lead poisoning be treated?
While lead poisoning is treatable, the effects of lead poisoning are irreversible. Changes to a child’s diet, washing hands, and removing shoes before entering the home can help reduce the exposure to lead. Children with high enough levels of lead in their blood require a chelation treatment, a treatment that attempts to remove lead from the body. The most common way to respond to lead poisoning in children is to find the lead source and remove it from their environment, a process called abatement.
Ans: Yes, lead poisoning can be prevented while taking some precaution. The most common way to treat lead poisoning in children is to find the lead source and remove it from their environment. Few people may have high levels of lead in their blood that they require a medicine called chelating agent.
Lead poisoning can be treated but prevention is best. If your levels are between 10 µg/dl and 14 µg/dl, you should be retested as your doctor/nurse advises. Between 15 ug/dl and 19 ug/dl, you should be retested as advised and you will be given steps to take to reduce the lead in your surroundings. If the level is above 20 ug/dl, a repeat test is done. You will receive a medical checkup and someone should come to your home to help you find the sources of lead. Medications to reduce the lead level may be started. Other family members may also need to be tested. Lead poisoning isn’t like a cold. A pill will not easily fix it. Once lead is in a body, it will stay there for a long time even with treatment. There may be permanent damage. In mild cases of lead poisoning, the “treatment” is finding the lead and making your home safe so that no more lead enters the body. If you can keep any more lead from getting into your body, then the amount of lead in the body will go down because some lead
Lead poisoning can be a serious problem for adults and children. Mild intoxication may have no symptoms or may cause abdominal pain, vomiting, constipation, headache and irritability. Severe intoxication can cause seizures and coma. Long-term exposure can cause permanent damage to the brain and nerves with resulting weakness, learning and behavioral disabilities. Children are particularly susceptible to the long-term problems associated with lead exposure. Nearly half a million children in the United States have blood lead levels high enough to cause irreversible damage to their health, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Yes, and the treatment varies as a function of the child’s blood lead concentration. The key for all children found to have an elevated blood lead is to identify the source of exposure and eliminate it immediately. This is called an environmental intervention. Drugs called chelating agents, which bind to lead and foster its elimination into urine, are available to treat children with markedly elevated blood lead levels. My laboratory developed one of these drugs (called Succimer), which is the only orally active chelating agent for lead. However, because these drugs can have adverse effects of their own, their use is generally limited to those children who have blood lead levels of 45 ug/dl or higher. Children with blood lead levels of 70 ug/dl are at risk for lead encephalopathy and are considered to be a medical emergency and require both medical and environmental management. For those whose blood levels fall between 10-44 ug/dl, environmental and, at times, nutritional interventions
