Lead exposure more hazardous to children than adults.

The Lowell Sun. Lowell, Mass: August 27, 2007.  

Ask the expert: Doreen Arcus, psychology professor, UMass Lowell

First Thomas the Tank Engine, then Dora, now nine million toys and even bibs are being recalled for lead or other dangers. How big a deal is all this?

It's a big deal for a couple of reasons. One is for the immediate harmful effects on children and the other is that it breaks into a parent's safety net, when you think you're doing all the right things, and you actually may be doing things that hurt your child. It breaks into your sense of, "I know what to do to keep my kid safe, and happy and healthy"; it challenges that. It threatens your whole world as a parent.

Talk about the effect of lead exposure on kids.

It turns out that there are negative effects of exposure to lead at far lower levels that we used to think because originally, the tests were done on adults. But children are different than adults in the way they process these materials. When lead comes into the system when the brain is still developing, there are specific sites in the brain that appear to sustain damage from lead ... The way it shows up is in impaired cognitive functioning, lower IQ scores, attention problems. It doesn't have to be so dramatic that one would say, "Oh goodness, this child is incredibly cognitively impaired," but it costs a child.

The CPSC and government have determined acceptable levels of lead for children's products. Does that mean a little bit of lead is OK?

Probably lead is not really good in any amount. I'm not a chemist, but I do know that once the damage is done, the damage doesn't get undone. There are studies that have been done that've looked at kids and chelation therapy, which can reduce lead levels from the body, but the cognitive, behavioral and neuro-cognitive damage can't be reversed. It doesn't mean there aren't therapies; but your brain doesn't ever bounce back from lead exposure.

You said some kids are more vulnerable than others. Why?

It's possible that children with one set of genes may be particularly vulnerable to particular toxins. It's not all main effects -- it's consequences. A simple example is the way people tend to get sick: some get head colds while others get stomachaches. But they're both exposed to the same germs. It may also have something to do with whatever else is going on in their environment -- if they're living in a blighted urban area where there are pollutants in the air, where there's lead paint around. (Toxins in toys) may be the one more piece that's being added (that pushes some kids over the threshold so they become ill).

Why are kids more susceptible than adults?

Our breathing zones are five feet off the ground, but preschoolers and infants, their zones are right down there, closer to the chemicals in the carpet, the pesticides in the grass. If there are heavy metals in the air, down low is where those things accumulate.

Another reason is that children's metabolic rate is different ... Infants get twice the exposure because they're breathing at twice the rate of adults ... Then, of course, their body size is smaller. Think about how much children eat compared to their body size -- a lot. So whatever contaminants are in that food chain, water, whatever, they're getting more of it, and into a system that's still growing.

If you don't have any recalled toys floating around, are you safe?

What you want to do is probably exercise some caution, and in the end, ask yourself, what does your child really need? Do you they really need 750,000 plastic toys? Probably not. Perhaps smaller numbers of things that you feel more confident about, that you know more about (the) origins of, maybe that's the way to go. Having fewer things around might be good for a number of reasons.

Such as?

There may be instances in which people are giving their kids all sorts of brightly colored noise-making things to play with when they might be engaging them one-on-one. Children learn all sorts of positive social skills, communication and even cognitive skills when they interact with other people ... and a toy can't really help a child to regulate their emotion or attention as another partner can.

So ultimately, what's your advice on the toy front?

Certainly if there's anything that a parent is suspicious about, they should remove it. If there's something a parent has a concern about, get rid of it. The potential harms here are very real. People aren't making this stuff up.

Credit: The Lowell Sun