Starting Monday, children living in Allegheny County will be required to have their blood tested for lead exposure.
And while those who miss the New Year deadline face no civil penalties, they could face additional health damage from lead poisoning that adversely affects cognition, behavior and general health, among other impacts.
For that reason, the Allegheny County Health Department is reminding county residents about the county blood-test requirement for children 9 to 12 months old and again at age 2.
If a child entering kindergarten hasn’t been tested, school officials will alert parents or guardians about the county’s lead-testing regulation, known as Act XXIII. Karen Hacker, director of the county Health Department, said those children can still enroll but school officials will advise parents of the county requirement and benefits of testing.
ACHD is reminding parents and providers that a regulation requiring all children in the county, unless otherwise exempted, to have their blood lead levels tested goes into effect on January 1, 2018. For more information: https://t.co/LZoqjjxA8o pic.twitter.com/TNErnthoeK
— Allegheny County (@Allegheny_Co) December 26, 2017
In the meantime, the health department also has notified — and provided information to — doctors and health-care providers countywide about the new lead-testing requirements, with hope that such testing will become routine, especially during annual pediatric visits.
“Here in Allegheny County we have multiple sources of potential exposure, including lead-containing paint and dust, water from lead pipes and soil,” Dr. Hacker said in the Tuesday alert. “Blood lead testing is important to determine if your child has been exposed. Parents and caregivers should have their children tested at the one-year pediatric visit and again at the second-year pediatric visit.”
Article XXIII — Universal Blood Lead Level Testing — adopted by Allegheny County Council on July 5, is designed to improve the health of the children living in the county through early detection and referral for treatment of lead poisoning, “while reducing the incidence, impact and cost of leading poisoning.” It also serves to provide needed information to parents and guardians about the lead exposure levels of their children while better enabling county surveillance of childhood lead poisoning.
There is no safe level of lead — a neurotoxin with potential to cause significant behavioral and learning problems, lower IQ, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, and even hearing problems, with excessively high levels potentially causing seizures, coma and even death, the county alert states.
Health damage from lead exposure cannot be reversed but further damage can be avoided be eliminating the contamination source.
For that reason, Dr. Hacker said, the new requirement hopefully will result in quicker identification and elimination of sources of lead exposure. For now, she said, only about 60 percent of children countywide have undergone testing for lead exposure, with higher levels occurring in those children living in houses or buildings built prior to 1978.
“The source of lead exposure must be found and removed,” she said.
A high-risk lead level is considered to be 5 micrograms per deciliter (μg/dL) or higher in the blood, with a level of 10 or higher prompting an automatic house inspection to determine and eliminate the source of lead exposure. Treatment to reduce lead levels in the body is necessary for any child with exposure rates of 45 micrograms or higher, Dr. Hacker said, noting an eventual goal of conducting a home inspection for any child whose blood lead levels fall in the 5-to 9-μg/dL range.
The health department will add a second full-time employee to its lead-inspection program in the New Year in support of the testing regulation that Allegheny County Council passed on July 5, she said.
The county already has programs to help low-income families eliminate sources of lead exposure in their homes or apartments. They include the health department’s Safe and Healthy Homes Program and the HUD-based Allegheny Lead Safe Homes Program, which can step in to do remedial action to eliminate lead exposure, particularly due to lead-based paint. That program phone number is 412-227-5700.
More information also is available on the health-department website.
David Templeton: dtempleton@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1578. Twitter: @templetoons.
First Published: December 26, 2017, 11:34 p.m.
