By Francine Black, Staff ReporterUNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS have detected a growing problem with lead poisoning in Kingston and St. Catherine, and up to yesterday 54 children under six years old had been diagnosed and some hospitalised.
Testing continues in other parishes, after which health officials and researchers expect the number of cases to mount, pushing the problem way beyond the initial mass discoveries almost 10 years ago in Kingston.
Responding to the enormity of the problem, Professor Gerald Lalor, chairman and director-general of the International Centre for Environmental and Nuclear Sciences (ICENS), could only comment that the situation has been "bad" for a long time.
The first documented case was in 1956.
Six children are now in hospital being treated for lead poisoning, and in two weeks, another six are to be checked in at the Bustamante Hospital for Children to undergo chelation therapy to reduce blood lead levels.
SOIL CONTAMINATED
The cases are linked largely to soil contamination caused by smelting and backyard car battery repair.
The children are from poor families in low-income areas, and their care is being financed out of grant funds given to ICENS by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica to conduct lead research. In testing carried out by the lead researchers at ICENS, which is based at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, children at a number of basic schools in both parishes were discovered with blood lead levels as low as 45 micrograms per decilitre and as high as 60.
In two of the cases, children had lead levels of 130 and 202. At this level, they are likely to die from the poisoning.
"When children have lead levels between 10 and 20, it's bad, but not that bad. But when they have levels over 45, it is a medical emergency," Dr. Mitko Vutchkov, senior research fellow, told The Gleaner.
Lead, unlike other heavy metals such as iron, does not build the body in any way.
A high blood lead level is believed to cause neurological or brain damage, lower intelligence quotient (IQ) levels, affect fertility and damage the kidneys.
Research has also linked lead poisoning to violent and criminal behaviour. The United States Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in 1991 set blood lead levels at 10 micrograms per decilitre as the acceptable standard, but now propose to lower that level.
In Jamaica, Professor Lalor and his team - which includes Dr. Vutchkov, a Belgian, and Sean Bryan, a scientific officer - will be seeking to ascertain the average levels among children across the island, as part of the research they are conducting.
So far, they have tested 628 children at 17 basic schools across the island.
Their work is a continuation of research done in Kintyre in 1995 where over 40 cases were detected. ICENS at time cleaned the community and sought to educate residents about the dangers.
