Description
I have attached the guidelines stipulated by the instructor. It is policy paper that follows Young and Quinn guide. please ask for any clarification please
Unformatted Attachment Preview
Purchase answer to see full attachment
Explanation & Answer
Attached.
Running head: POLICY FOR LEAD POISONING IN CHILDREN
1
Policy for lead Poisoning in Children
Student’s name
Institution of Affiliation.
POLICY FOR LEAD POISONING IN CHILDREN
2
1. Problem Statement
Lead poisoning is one of the leading causes of neurological problems in children. With
over a century in research, children are still being exposed to lead and the effects are irreversible.
Some of the effects are cognitive problems, neurologic injury, gastric problems and anemia. The
biggest percentages of people who are affected by lead poisoning are children because they put
their toys in their mouths. Additionally, the chew on paint on their cribs and they are exposed to
dust which might contain lead. Some children survive with high levels of lead in their bodies but
some children react to even the lowest amounts of lead in their bodies.
The problem of lead poisoning has been on the rise ever since industrialization took root in the
US, but it has been ignored due to the economic benefits of lead. Children were getting lead
encelopathy and as early as 1910, a relationship between lead and cognitive defects in children
had been established.
A major source of lead poisoning was leaded gasoline but it was abolished n 1976 and the
complete abolition was achieved in 1995. It helped reduce the amounts of lead in the biosphere
by more than half but there are other sources that continue to expose children to lead. These
sources include plumbing done using components of lead, paints and toys plated with lead.
To get rid of these sources, public health action must be enacted to get rid of lead as a raw
material. For those already affected by the metal, drugs should be administered to lower the
amount of lead and to convince companies to drop lead as a raw material, they should be shown
how economical it is.
2. Assemble some evidence
Children under six years have been the major culprits for lead poisoning ever since early
20th century when companies started production of lead plated toys. Concerns were raised over
POLICY FOR LEAD POISONING IN CHILDREN
3
the correlation between the lead painted toys and a childhood problem such as mental disorders
but it was put in the back burner. Back then, there were no advanced methods to carry out
scientific analysis therefore, the physicians could not present a valid case. By the 1920sand
1930s, there was a pile of evidence pointing to the dangers of lead poisoning via the toys, and the
government too action. However, these toy companies continued producing these toys way
beyond 1940, even after the executives knew that the toys led to lead poisoning in children
(Rabin, 2011).
Neurologic injury is a serious effect of lead poisoning and recent studies suggest that
levels even lower than the recommended level of 10µg/dl can cause neurologic injury. Some
children are at a higher risk of lead poisoning the others and some sources of lead are not
obvious. For intake, eating sweets imported from countries like Mexico is enough o exposes a
child to dangerous levels of lead (Silbergeld, 1997). An example is a boy who was taken to
hospital with complains of stomach unrest and the initial diagnosis pointed towards
gastroenteritis but further examination revealed that the boy had normocytic anemia. An x-ray
revealed that the boy had a metal substance in his stomach that wasn’t causing obstruction;
therefore it was extracted from his stomach. On examination of his blood lead levels, it was 123
µg/dL which is way higher than the allowed limit. The pedant had 38.8% lead and examination
of other necklaces produced by the same manufacture4rr were found to have high amounts of
lead. The public health action that followed was the manufacturer was forced to remove his
product from the market (VanArsdale, Leiker, Kohn, Merritt, & Horowitz, 2004). It helped save
lives but the total amount of children affected by the poison is unknown.
A study was done to determine the causes and ...