I live in a house with a lead connection to the municipal water main and my children have been drinking tap water since they were born. Should I be afraid for their health?
No. An evaluation conducted by the Montréal Public Health Department of the health impacts of lead concentrations measured in the tap water of these homes was reassuring : we do not think that blood lead levels in children who have drunk tap water were higher than the public health intervention level of 100 micrograms per litre of blood. We are also convinced that their blood lead levels are lower than the levels that all Québeckers now over the age of 30 had when they were young (200 micrograms per litre in the 1970s, illustrated in Figure 1). Indeed, these individuals were exposed to much higher lead levels through the air they breathed and the food they ate. For example, cans of commercial ready-to-serve milk preparations had lead solders with average lead concentrations of 70 µg/L, which is higher than the previous standard of 50 µg/L for lead in drinking water. In addition, children who were breastfed ingested a higher level of lead through breast milk than today’s infants since t
Related Questions
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- I live in a house with a lead connection to the municipal water main and my children have been drinking tap water since they were born. Should I be afraid for their health?
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