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In cities across America, parents worry about how to keep their children safe from lead exposure. Initially used in industrial and building products, lead poses numerous dangers to childhood health and well-being. Pathways to lead exposure for children include contact with paint, dust, water, and soil found in older homes, especially those built before 1950 when lead paint was most common. Federal regulations banned lead in residential paints in 1978, though its traces linger throughout urban centers (National Center for Healthy Housing 2019; Markowitz and Rosner 2014). Worldwide, children remain at risk of lead exposure from multiple sources as well, such as from contaminated soil from battery recycling and mining operations (World Health Organization 2019).
Exposure to lead in dilapidated housing poses significant health risks to young children under age six because their small, developing bodies cannot...
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Additional Reading
Hanchette, C. L. (2008). The political ecology of lead poisoning in eastern North Carolina. Health & Place, 14(2), 209–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2007.06.003
Morello-Frosch, R., & Lopez, R. (2006). The riskscape and the color line: Examining the role of segregation in environmental health disparities. Environmental Research, 102(2), 181–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2006.05.007
Pauli, B. J. (2019). Flint fights back: Environmental justice and democracy in the Flint water crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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McLeskey, M.H. (2022). Lead Exposure in US Cities. In: Brears, R.C. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Futures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87745-3_293
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