I got the job of being a moderator and lead adviser on the Facebook group “Kids with lead poisoning”. That ended up using a lot more time and effort than I expected, and since it involved doing something practical to help kids recover from the effects of lead poisoning it’s been quite rewarding.

My mindset has changed significantly since I started this blog and I’ve shifted to trying to both prevent lead poisoning, and treating lead poisoning.

That need some explanation.

The medical profession, by and large, is unaware of the effects of lead poisoning, or if you like the consequences of lead poisoning. What is possibly worse is a lack of understanding of the kinetics of lead distribution in the body. By that I mean there is little understanding that lead accumulates in the body, in the bones. Up to 95% of the lead in an adult’s body is in the bones, 75% in children. Lead is only released from the bones during the normal remodeling of bone, which consists of breakdown by osteoclasts, and rebuilding of bone by osteoblasts. Unless lead is removed from the body, at least some of the lead released from bone will be reincorporated into bone. That’s in part why lead in bone has a half-life of decades in an adult.

Bone lead release also maintains a low but steady concentration of lead in the circulation washing the organs, and this is responsible for the long-term effects of lead exposure like cardiovascular disease, neurological disease, renal disease, some types of cancer and so on.

If the cycle of release and reincorporation is broken by removing lead from the circulation, then you have an opportunity to speed up the net loss of bone lead from decades to months or years depending on bone lead stores.

It takes surprisingly little oral calcium (or ferric) disodium EDTA to achieve both a lowering of circulating lead levels (blood lead) and a slow but steady reduction in bone lead levels. This is a process that can’t be hurried up by higher doses, or even intravenous chelation. The limiting factor is lead release due to bone remodeling. Vitamin D can speed things up slightly, and conditions like blood cancer, osteoporosis, pregnancy and lactation can greatly speed up bone lead release, but in all cases, it also provides an opportunity to remove lead more quickly with a chelator.

Two major failings of the medical treatment of lead poisoning are the dogmas that damage resulting from lead exposure is irreversible, and that chelation is a last resort treatment as it is otherwise unjustified because of imagined risks. Both dogmas are almost completely without foundation. They’re wrong.

I’ll address these issues more completely in future posts but I guess the bottom line is no one needs to be harmed by lead when a small quantity of a food preservative or iron fortificant can prevent the accumulation of more lead and remove existing lead from the body. We have the means, right now to safely and inexpensive lead-proof children and adults exposed to lead, almost regardless of the amount of lead in their environment.

This is real, it works.