Long-banned lead paint making thousands of L.A. County kids sick

L.A. County will get $134 million from funds to rid homes of business lead hazards. But that covers only a fraction of needed work, officials say.
During his pediatrics residency training at a hospital in Hollywood, Dr. David Bolour rarely provided a second considered to lead poisoning.

Lead paint have been banned since prior to the 36-year-old doctor was born. Children being harmed by the once-ubiquitous metal was something of days gone by, he thought.

However when he started as a pediatrician in 2015 at St. John’s Well Child and Family Middle in South Los Angeles, Bolour began evaluating every child who emerged in for business lead poisoning. And he learned that about 1 out of 100 possessed raised lead levels, he said.

General population health officials consider even low degrees of lead within a child’s blood to be lead poisoning, since studies have associated just smaller amounts of lead contact with irreversible brain damage and stunted development in kids.

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“AS I came here, I came to the realization this is a genuine problem,” Bolour said.

Although lead poisoning is becoming less common lately, roughly 2,000 children are identified as having unsafe degrees of lead in their blood each year in LA County, according to convey data. South L.A. is one of the very most affected areas.

Parents who learn their children are exposure to lead usually require improvements in their house to make it safer. Halting the business lead exposure provides down a child’s blood business lead levels.

But until their children are tested, families are often unaware their homes is actually a source of business lead, Bolour said. Upon asking them about their living conditions, Bolour frequently learns that their old homes never have been renovated, and tend coated in business lead paint.

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Small children are usually afflicted by eating paint that has chipped off the walls or ingesting paint dust which has lead. Lead-based paint was banned in 1978, but most homes in L.A. County were built before that, so many children are in risk just from crawling around their living spaces or participating in in the yard.

“With regards to business lead poisoning, it’s still the main pediatric environmental…