I’ve been offered an introduction to Queensland Health and was asked to write an introductory email. It had to be concise and to the point which will also provide a summary of where we are, with the exception of the WHS issues which are of critical importance, but not to the Health Department, yet.

Anyway, the letter:

I started a literature review of the current known effects of lead exposure some time ago. What I have discovered was much more serious than I ever imagined.

Lead exposure has been linked to many common diseases, including cancer, and has been linked to neurological disorders, ranging from autism-like symptoms in infants, to increases in youth violence and crime, to symptoms like MS and Parkinson’s and to dementia-like symptoms in old age. This includes soldiers diagnosed with PTSD that was found to be due to lead exposure.

We are exposed to many different sources of lead including environmental lead, lead-contaminated food, lead paint from renovating old houses or old cars, lead paint on toys, lead in spices and lead contamination from leaded petrol, which is still used in light aircraft, and lead from any activity that involves heating or sanding lead.

A particular property of lead, that it mimics calcium, means that lead bioaccumulates in the body, mostly in the bones. Little lead ever leaves the body except in situations where lead is released from bone, such as gestation, breast-feeding or osteoporosis.

Body lead levels increase during life, the rate depending on the degree of lead exposure. Once body lead reaches critical levels, which are quite low in the case of neurological effects, damage follows. Lead has been implicated as a causative agent in many disease states.

Statistics from the American CDC estimate that lead co-morbidities could be as high as 400,000 each year. They also estimate that 1 in 6 children in the US are adversely affected by lead. There is no reason to believe that the situation in Australia is any better.

Considering the sheer amount of evidence of the deleterious effects of lead exposure, it seems obvious that there would be wide-spread medical awareness of the importance of including body or blood lead measurement as part of the diagnostic process, particularly when investigating neurological disease. This is generally not the case.

The means of safely removing lead from the body have been known and used since WWII so it seems logical that having determined that significant amounts of lead are present in a patient, that it be removed. Unless a patient presents with very high, toxic levels of lead in the blood, no treatment is given. This is despite levels of lead being in a concentration known to cause harm, particularly in infants.

We have a three-fold problem in our medical services: a lack of wide-spread awareness of the dangers of lead, a lack of appreciation of the contribution of lead to disease processes, and a lack of appreciation that excess lead can and should be safely removed.

Thats it in a nutshell.

It’s been many weeks now with no reply.