Doctors Urged on Signs of Lead Poisoning
ATLANTA - Children with blood lead levels lower than the U.S. standard may still suffer lower IQs or other problems, a government advisory panel said Thursday as it urged doctors to be more alert to signs of lead poisoning.
The warning, in a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, comes amid growing parent concerns over imported toys with lead.
Lead poisoning can cause irreversible learning disabilities and behavioral problems and, at very high levels, seizures, coma and even death.
The CDC has never set a threshold for what defines lead poisoning. But it created a standard of sorts in 1991 when it said a lead level of 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood should prompt a doctor to assess the child's environment and take other protective steps.
"You can have toxicity at levels all the way down to zero," said Dr. Morri Markowitz, director of the pediatric environmental sciences clinic at New York City's Montefiore Medical Center. He was not involved in the report.
However, the guideline of 10 micrograms has become the number that doctors use when deciding to refer a child for further attention. The same number is used in Canada and Britain.
This is the first time the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention has focused on the risks to children with lower levels of lead in their blood, said Dr. Helen Binns of Northwestern University, primary author of the report.
The panel isn't proposing a new standard, she said, but is "emphasizing that all levels are important."
The report is being published in the November issue of the medical journal Pediatrics.
Children with blood lead levels below 10, or even those up to 20, exhibit no obvious symptoms. But scientists believe intellectual development may be affected at lower levels.
The new report was driven by recent research that indicated differences in intellectual development of children with measurable levels of lead poisoning as compared to other kids.
The paper advises doctors how to talk to parents of children who have lower levels of lead and how to describe the risk, nutrition changes and safeguards to prevent any additional exposure, Binns said.
There's no treatment proven effective at reducing these lead levels in children, said Mary Jean Brown, chief of the CDC's lead poisoning prevention branch.
"We don't have an intervention that will lower a blood lead level from 8 to 4," she said.
The paper also recommends that doctors check the labs they use for testing blood, because some are more exact than others.
Approximately 310,000 U.S. children aged 1-5 years have blood lead levels greater than 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, according to CDC estimates. That's fewer than 2 percent of children in that age bracket. By MIKE STOBBE AP Medical Writer
8:01 PM EDT, November 1, 2007
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A man swims in flood waters in Villahermosa in Mexico's Gulf coast. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans fled a flooded region of the Gulf coast Friday, jumping from rooftops into rescue helicopters, scrambling into boats or swimming out through murky brown water, while Mexico's President Felipe Calderon called it one of Mexico's worst recent natural disasters.
A Gwinnett County mother’s push to get Harry Potter books banned from elementary school bookshelves has made it to the state board of education. Laura Mallory is the mother of three who's fighting against those books. Tuesday morning she pleaded her case to a hearing officer who will make a recommendation to the state board. Among her arguments is a central theme that the books promote witchcraft and evil, but people who know about real life witchcraft, or Wiccanism, say the witches in the Potter books have nothing to do with reality and a lot more to do with getting children to enjoy reading. At Inner Space and the Hoot Owl Attic bookstore in Sandy Springs you can find anything you want to know about the mystical world. “We have books on Wicca, Paganism, mystical Christianity,” the clerk said. And in back they put many of these words into action. They teach and they practice. People like Marcia Gaither. She used to practice Wiccanism, or witchcraft, now she's teaching a class on it. “Do what you will but harm none in the process -- I guess you could say the Wiccan equivalent of the golden rule,” said Gaither. She says the controversy about Harry Potter is absurd. “No one tried to take ‘The Wizard of Oz’ away, you didn't see them taking ‘Bewitched’ off the air when it was on; ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch.’ All of these things are fantasy and nothing in any of these are even remotely close to what Wiccans practice,” Gaither said. She says the real magic the books worked in her life is with her children and teaching them to love to read. “My daughter doesn't hate reading, but my son did -- and this is one thing that helped us get over the hump,” Gaither said. “And he doesn't follow the same path I follow. It didn't draw him into witchcraft or anything. ”In the classes, they teach about witchcraft and wizardry. They even teach spells, but the spells they talk about don't turn anyone into a frog. It's more like spells for a good job, a raise, or inner peace. They compare them to a type of prayer. 
Laura Mallory is not a Harry Potter fan, and she isn't giving up the fight to have the popular character taken out of elementary school. She says the series may encourage reading, but it also encourages witchcraft and evil.
AFP/DDP/File - Sun Oct 14, 11:47 AM ET The Dalai Lama delivers a speech in September 2007 in Muenster, Germany. Washington was set Wednesday to bestow one of its top civilian honors on the Dalai Lama, a move that sparked anger from China and risked escalating already heightened tensions over the exiled leader. 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel(R) shows the way to the Dalai Lama after a meeting in the chancellery in Berlin in September 2007. China has cancelled a third consecutive Germany-China meeting following a summit between Merkel and the Dalai Lama in September, the German foreign ministry said Saturday. 
In this photo provided by the New York City Hall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg welcomes the Dalai Lama, right, into Gracie Mansion in New York Friday, Oct. 12, 2007.
AFP/DDP/File - Fri Oct 12, 2:43 PM ET The Dalai Lama delivers a speech during a lecture September 2007. China's attempts to isolate the Dalai Lama will fail, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader's special envoy said Friday after Beijing slammed a US plan to award him one of its top civilian honors. 
A man prays along with The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, as he speaks to members of the Tibetan Community Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007, at the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center in New York. 
A group of Buddhist monks listen as the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, speaks to members of the Tibetan Community, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007 at the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center in New York.
The Dalai Lama, left, Tibet's spiritual leader, greets Buddhist monks as he arrives to speak to members of the Tibetan Community Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007 at the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center in New York.
Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, center, takes the stage with members from other religious faiths during a prayers for world peace interfaith dialogue in Ithaca, N.Y., Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007.
