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Lead exposure is not a joke. Especially in children. We already know that this can lead to behavioral problems and learning difficulties as these exposed children get older. The researchers discovered another potential impact: mental illness.
A study published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry shows that an early exposure to toxic metal, present in paint and dust from old homes and even in local water supplies, is badociated with an increase in the mental illness in adulthood, including phobia, depression, mania and schizophrenia. This study is certainly not perfect, but it has followed 579 people for more than 30 years and claims to be the "longest and largest" psychiatric. follow-up on people exposed to lead and tested for lead in childhood.
Unfortunately, these children were predominantly white and came from the town of Dunedin in southeastern New Zealand. This makes the results difficult to generalize, especially for communities of color that are disproportionately burned by lead exposure in the United States, explained Pam Factor-Litvak, professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center, who did not participate in the study. This does not diminish the relevance of the study, nor the need for further research.
"This is one of the first cohort studies in the world," Factor-Litvak told Etienne about Dunedin's multidisciplinary health and development study, which has been tracking these people since the age of 18. 3 years. "All the measurements in this study, to my knowledge, were done with extreme thought, and they used state-of-the-art measurements. "
The authors, many of whom are from Duke University, collected badessments – including clinical interviews, medical records and questionnaires from close friends and close relatives – of these individuals, born between April 1972 and March 1973, to evaluate their mental health. The study enters its next phase this year while the cohort will turn 45, but this new study uses data up to 38 years old.
"These are modest effects. They do not make people fall dead, but they do have an effect on people, and when you consider at the population level that more people are diagnosed with certain clinical conditions, that's really important. "
The level of lead exposure in the cohort ranged from 4 micrograms per deciliter to 50 micrograms per deciliter, with an average of 11 micrograms per deciliter. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention place the level of action at 5 micrograms per deciliter, but no level of lead is safe for children.) However, these figures are based only on a simple sample of blood taken at age 11 years old. In an ideal scenario, samples would have been collected when they were young, throughout their childhood and even in adulthood.
Nevertheless, after controlling for certain factors that may affect mental health, including family socio-economic status, maternal IQ, and family history of mental illness, the survey showed that each increase of 5 micrograms per Deciliter of blood lead was badociated with a 1.34 point increase in general psychopathology, which includes all the mental health symptoms examined by the team.
It's a modest impact. The consequences of child abuse or family history, for example, can be much more serious. However, this does not forget to emphasize this, said Joseph Braun, badociate professor of epidemiology at Brown University, who did not participate in the study.
"It's important to note that lead is a relatively easy exposure to change," he told Earther. "These are modest effects. They do not make people fall dead, but they do have an effect on people, and when you consider at the population level that more people are diagnosed with certain clinical conditions, that's really important. "
Fortunately, today 's lead levels in blood are generally well below those of this study. At the time, the impact of lead on health was not understood and the metal was in our essence and our paint.
Increasing the risk of mental illness is just one of many ways in which lead exposure in children can have an impact on a person's life forever. Other studies have established links between lead exposure and decreased IQ or behavioral problems, including violence. Mary Jean Brown, who headed the CDC lead poisoning prevention department before moving on to teach at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prevention is the key.
She is not at all surprised by these results and sees "a new field of research and another nail in the coffin of exposure to lead," she told Earther. This document is just another reminder of why no one should be exposed to lead. There is still a lot we do not know about what it does to our body, but what we do know is rather bleak.
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