The water crisis at Flint, a town in Michigan, US in 2014 has focused public attention on the dangers of lead exposure, especially in children. A late 2016 investigation found that nearly 3,000 other communities in the US had even worse lead water levels than Flint. A recently published study claims that “half of US population was exposed to adverse lead levels in early childhood”.
Lead exposure during the critical brain development window between the ages one and five has the most adverse effects on humans, causing irreversible and permanent brain damage. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 500,000 children under the age of six have blood-lead levels that exceed the “reference level”, as it’s called.
