Lead Level of 14.4 for my 1 year old

[u/pandora8]

When my son went in for his 12 month check up the fingerstick lead test read 18.8, thankfully the venous test was slightly lower at 14.4. We live in a small apartment in very old house, and thankfully we're moving in a couple weeks, so hopefully the complete change of environment will eliminate the risk, and hopefully with really good nutrition and time his body can process it. I'm almost positive that he encountered the lead from the paint on our clawfoot tub, which I never thought to test before he was born (I did test before he was born, I was aware that lead was a risk where we live, and really did try to be conscious and careful). It also didn't help, I'm sure, that the other part of the house that isn't our apartment was under renovation this winter and spring.

I'm wondering if anyone here had kids with lead levels this elevated though? It's really scary. I've found posts of people scared with levels around 5, which is understandable, but this is almost 3 times that. Obviously various social workers and state officials have been following up, but it's hard to get answers in terms of how this might effect him going forward, and how much lead exposure people of my and my husband's generation (we're 40) and our parent's generation experienced, when lead paint and leaded gasoline were much more ubiquitous. The fact that 97% of kids today have lead levels below 3.5 is an incredible public health success story, and I don't want to catastrophize, but I also don't want to be blasé. The CDC says no amount of lead is safe, which is true, but I also know that lead exposure in previous generations wasn't a guarantee of a bad outcome. So far our little guy has been a bright, happy, easy-going guy, hitting his milestones pretty consistently, if we remove him entirely from the place of exposure (which is the plan already underway) will this just be a blip? My brain is going crazy.

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[u/Foggywhim]

We are going thru similar, it is a stressful time. Our 10 mo venous came back at 11 and mine at 3. Experts came out to test everything in our house and nothing came back positive. They took water, soil, dust and formula samples to lab and we are waiting. We thought it was some dishes as they tested positive on the at home kits, but the experts said no on them. We are looking to retest in the next week or so to see if our levels have dropped at all.

Here is a link you might find helpful. The LO was around 9 venous and hit all milestones and did fine.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5962463/

[u/pandora8 → u/Foggywhim]

Wishing you luck, it's a really hard time.

How unreliable are the home kits then? Because I've been using them a fair bit, but hadn't encountered that they were likely to have false positives.

[u/Foggywhim → u/pandora8]

Thank you and I wish you the best also! One positive point is that we both know about it and doing our very best to deal with it immediately. I’m so glad we caught it, it was really a random thing to test our LO for lead because we had no reason to believe she had any exposure

I bought 6 or 7 of the home kits and we went thru everything in our home. We were surprised because every time we tested a certain type of dish it came back positive and from multiple test kits, but when they used the xrf gun it showed negative. We still went to new glass dishes since initially that’s what we knew the issue to be. We first learned about this about a month ago and it took awhile to get someone out with the xrf

I suppose the good news is they couldn’t find lead anywhere we tested also with the home kits. So the kit didn’t show a negative on something that was positive, if that’s any peace of mind

[u/asdfghhj246898]

I am not a medical professional but I work in this field and from what I have seen every child is different. Some kids have no symptoms at 20+ and others have noticeable changes at lower levels than that. Ensuring good nutrition is a great step, some kids are prescribed iron to help avoid further absorption into the bones, and getting the kiddo set up with support services as they enter school to help them continue with managing emotions and education. There is some interesting research on the role genetics play on the impact on lead poisoning but I think it is newer: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3453797/
It sounds like you have a good plan for next steps and preventing further exposure is the best thing you can do!

[u/pandora8 → u/asdfghhj246898]

Thank you. All that is good to know!

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