Lead Toxicity

Excerpt

Humans have been using lead for a variety of applications since millennia, and concomitant with this use has developed an ancient recognition of the adverse effects of lead on the human body. As early as the second century BCE, physicians understood the link between lead exposure and neurocognitive disease, and some scholars have wondered whether the extensive use of sapa, a syrup of unfermented grape juice reduced in a leaded vessel and used as a preservative for wine, may have contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire. Though lead became a common occupational toxin with the birth of the Industrial Revolution, by the end of the 19-century childhood lead poisoning secondary to exposure to lead-based paints was beginning to be recognized. As the 20 century progressed, so did the appreciation for increasingly subtle and even subclinical manifestations of lead toxicity. Today, healthcare providers and public health officials must grapple with the mounting evidence implicating lead as a potent neurotoxin with measurable negative effects on cognition at vanishingly low blood lead concentrations in the face of the difficulties surrounding the feasibility of completely eliminating lead from children’s environment.