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Half of US population exposed to adverse lead levels in early childhood

Author

Listed:
  • Michael J. McFarland

    (a Department of Sociology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306;; b Center for Demography and Population Health, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306;)

  • Matt E. Hauer

    (a Department of Sociology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306;; b Center for Demography and Population Health, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306;)

  • Aaron Reuben

    (c Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708)

Abstract

Considerable effort is expended to protect today’s children from lead exposure, but there is little evidence on the harms past lead exposures continue to hold for yesterday’s children, who are victims of what we term legacy lead exposures. We estimate that over 170 million Americans alive today were exposed to high-lead levels in early childhood, several million of whom were exposed to five-plus times the current reference level. Our estimates allow future work to plan for the health needs of these Americans and to inform estimation of the true contributions of lead exposure to population health. We estimate population-level effects on IQ loss and find that lead is responsible for the loss of 824,097,690 IQ points as of 2015.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael J. McFarland & Matt E. Hauer & Aaron Reuben, 2022. "Half of US population exposed to adverse lead levels in early childhood," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 119(11), pages 2118631119-, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:nas:journl:v:119:y:2022:p:e2118631119
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    Cited by:

    1. Ke Zhang & Pan Gao & Chang Liu & Xin Chen & Xinye Huang & Yongping Pu & Zenghui Liu, 2022. "Structural Evolution and Enhanced Piezoelectric Activity in Novel Lead-Free BaTiO 3 -Ca(Sn 1/2 Zr 1/2 )O 3 Solid Solutions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(20), pages 1-11, October.

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    Keywords

    population; lead; cognitive;
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