Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Pediatricians Blast Lead Standards: 'We Cannot Have Our Children Be Canaries In The Coal Mine'
USA Today: Pediatricians: U.S. Not Doing Enough To Halt Childhood Lead Poisoning
Despite dramatic declines in childhood lead poisoning over the past few decades, the United States is doing too little to prevent new poisonings, the nation’s leading group of pediatricians said Monday. The statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics, published in the journal Pediatrics, comes at a time when lead is receiving renewed public attention, largely due to the apparent poisoning of thousands of children who drank contaminated water in Flint, Mich. (Painter, 6/20)
NPR: Pediatricians Call For More Testing And Tighter Rules On Lead Exposure
When lead was taken out of products like paint and gasoline, levels of the metal in the blood of U.S. children dropped. But the American Academy of Pediatrics says the problem is not over. "Most existing lead standards fail to protect children," members of the AAP's environmental health council report in a statement published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. Standards for the amount of lead that can be present in paint, water, dust and soil are not based on health standards, the pediatricians say, but instead on what's been feasible to attain. Such standards, they write, create "an illusion of safety." (Bichell, 6/20)
San Jose Mercury News/Graphiq: Despite Reforms, Lingering Lead Plagues Health Of U.S
Lead poisoning has long been linked to lower IQs, behavioral problems and other disabilities - but more recently, scientists have used to it explain patterns of violent crime in the United States and around the world. While the past 50 years have seen vast improvements in lead regulation, the side effects of exposure are grave and still present. (Perrym, 6/17)
