Soil Lead and Children’s Blood Lead Disparities in Pre- and Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans (USA)

Abstract

This study appraises New Orleans soil lead and children’s lead exposure before and ten years after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. Introduction: Early childhood exposure to lead is associated with lifelong and multiple health, learning, and behavioral disorders. Lead exposure is an important factor hindering the long-term resilience and sustainability of communities. Lead exposure disproportionately affects low socioeconomic status of communities. No safe lead exposure is known and the common intervention is not effective. An essential responsibility of health practitioners is to develop an effective primary intervention. Methods: Pre- and post-Hurricane soil lead and children’s blood lead data were matched by census tract communities. Soil lead and blood lead data were described, mapped, blood lead graphed as a function of soil lead, and Multi-Response Permutation Procedures statistics established disparities. Results: Simultaneous decreases occurred in soil lead accompanied by an especially large decline in children’s blood lead 10 years after Hurricane Katrina. Exposure disparities still exist between children living in the interior and outer areas of the city. Conclusions: At the scale of a city, this study demonstrates that decreasing soil lead effectively reduces children’s blood lead. Primary prevention of lead exposure can be accomplished by reducing soil lead in the urban environment.

Blood Lead Levels and Learning Disabilities: A Cross-Sectional Study of the 2003–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)

“…Moreover, a recent review of the scientific literature on Pb by Vorvolakos et al [ 7 ] found that there is no safe threshold for Pb exposure. Other studies and the ATSDR confirm this finding [ 1 , 2 ]. Landrigan et al [ 8 ] estimated the contribution of environmental pollutants to the incidence, prevalence, mortality, and costs of pediatric disease in American children and estimated the total annual costs for Pb poisoning to be $43.4 billion.…”

“…The ATSDR also described that many children diagnosed with LDs as a consequence of Pb exposure perform poorly in school [ 1 ]. Previous studies suggest a significant relationship between Pb exposure and LDs [ 1 , 2 ]. For example, Kaiser et al [ 3 ] used extant datasets from the Florida Department of Health, Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program and the Florida Department of Education to compare children who were tested for Pb poisoning to children not tested for Pb poisoning.…”

Sources and Pathways of Lead Contamination in Urban Community Gardens in Toledo, Ohio

“…Drip zones are the 1 meter zone immediately surrounding structures containing Pb paint where it has naturally or purposefully been removed to collect in the surrounding soil. Houses in other cities have shown a similar pattern including Indianapolis, Indiana (Filippelli et al, 2005); London, England (BGS, 2017), New Orleans, Louisiana (Mielke et al, 2017), and Sydney, Australia (Birch et al, 2011).…”

A Scoping Review on the Characteristics of Human Exposome Studies

“…Another study (1%) conducted network medicine analysis of specific comorbidities [114]. Two studies [115,116] (2%) were similar in design, looking at pre-, and post-Katrina-induced changes in the environmental (soil) and blood signatures of lead for the affected communities. Finally, another study (1%) conducted a secondary analysis of geochemical maps and cancer data at the municipality level [117].…”

“…Four studies (5%) described the characteristics of exposome cohorts [53,127,72,55] and another (1%) characterized urban environmental and health indicators using the urban exposome framework [73]. Four studies (5%) explored the partitioning of a contaminant between environmental and human biospecimen, of which three considered a biomarker of exposure to environmental contaminants as a study outcome [117,115,80,116] , while only one study (1%) linked occupational records to health outcomes [109].…”