Lead-based paint eating

Home is the most important setting for infants and young children. They often eat, play, and sleep in the same area. Examples of sources of exposure to pollutants include building materials (e.g. wood treated with arsenic-based pesticides), lead-based paints, insecticides that are sprayed indoors, fuel (e.g. coal and wood) for indoor cooking, disposal practices for domestic waste (e.g. incineration), household chemicals (e.g. solvents), and small-scale enterprises at the family residence (e.g. brick producers who operate low-technology combustion kilns and makers of pottery using lead-based paints). 

Although lead poisoning has been known since at least the second century b.c., lead continues to be a problem. For example, many children have been exposed to lead by eating chips of lead-based paint. Because of this problem, lead-based paints are no longer used... 

The major cause of lead poisoning is lead-based paint. A child does not, however, have to eat paint chips to become lead poisoned. Any time lead-based paint is disrupted there is a potential for lead poisoning—whether the paint is rubbed against, sanded or scraped, chewed on, or simply falling off. 

Federal law prohibited the use of lead-based paint for cooking, eating, or drinking utensils in 1976. 

Lead is common in older homes and buildings. Any building constructed before 1980 is a likely suspect for containing lead, since lead paint was used for many years before its health risks were fully understood. If young children eat flaking paint—a common problem—that contains lead, the health repercussions can be very serious. Structures with lead-based paint include schools, multifamily housing, single-family homes, and so on. Unfortunately, control, containment, and abatement can be extremely expensive. 

Lead has had and continues to have many beneficial uses. Given its past and present widespread industrial use, there are numerous sources that introduce lead into the environment, thus making it accessible to human beings. Human beings are exposed to lead in the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the food they eat. Current literature also identifies the ingestion of suriace dust and soil as an important pathway of lead exposure for young children (ATSDR, 1988). Ingesting lead-based paint may also be a source of childhood exposure. 

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