Re: Those cheap lead fillings must go! <--- It's time to eliminate the whole list.

From: Joel M. Eichen, D.D.S. (joeleichen_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/17/04 

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 09:45:15 -0400

We are in complete agreement with Dr. Jan Drew.

Those cheap lead dental fillings must be eliminated as soon as
possible. Where else but in the mouth is lead permissible?

QUOTED FROM BELOW

It's time to eliminate the whole list.

JOEL

***

Consumer Watch | Lead products must go - now

By Jeff Gelles

Inquirer Columnist

Kara Burkhart will never forget the utterly ordinary moment that
eventually led to her son Colton's life-threatening sickness and one
of the largest recalls in U.S. history.

It was June 2003, the end of the school year, and she'd taken Colton
with his older brother, Cody, to celebrate at a hamburger joint in
their hometown of Redmond, Ore.

The boys saw a gumball-style vending machine, and begged for one of
the trinkets inside. After lunch, Burkhart gave in. Colton went home
with a medallion on a black cord bearing a symbol that looked like an
hourglass.

Burkhart remembers seeing the toy once more at home, when she picked
it up and put it on a shelf. The next time she saw it was last July,
after Colton suffered a terrifying, unexplained illness.

Though the 4-year-old had no recent history of sucking on toys, he had
swallowed this one. It stayed in his stomach three weeks until an
X-ray blamed it for his abdominal pains.

The medallion was surgically removed, but the worst news was yet to
come: Some of Colton's symptoms, including anemia and lethargy, were
the result of acute lead poisoning.

That 25-cent toy medallion contained about 40 percent lead.

Long-term effects unclear

The level of lead in Colton's blood rose as high as 123 micrograms per
deciliter - more than a dozen times the threshold for danger set by
the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC says no level is considered "safe." But at 10 micrograms,
children clearly can suffer lead poisoning's classic effects:
diminished intelligence, attention and behavioral problems, and
impaired hearing and growth.

Since last summer, treatment has cut Colton's blood-lead level to 37
micrograms, and the family hopes the long-term effects will be
limited.

"But you just don't know," said Burkhart, who still sometimes cries
when recalling fearing that Colton's lead level was enough to have
killed him. "He was a very sick little boy," she said.

Colton's poisoning led to the first of three recalls of lead toy
jewelry announced by four importers and the Consumer Product Safety
Commission.

Last week's was by far the largest: 150 million pieces of cheap
jewelry, half of them believed to contain large amounts of this toxic
metal, which were sold for 25 to 75 cents in gumball-style machines
from January 2002 through last month.

Toss out any cheap metal jewelry

Despite its size, though, this recall only addresses part of a larger
problem. And the story behind it raises more questions than it
answers.

Is this the only lead jewelry out there? Not likely, concedes Brian
Kovens of A&A Global Industries of Maryland, one of the four
importers.

"Lead has been used for years," Kovens said, and not just in
vending-machine jewelry, but also in inexpensive trinkets distributed
in other ways.

Toy-jewelry makers have been drawn to lead because it's cheap, heavy,
and easy to work with. For that same reason, parents should consider
any cheap metal toys suspect. When in doubt, throw them out.

In this case, the four importers inexplicably relied on a surface
coating to protect kids from the lead, and used labs that performed
only the most basic "wipe" test on the jewelry.

The CPSC says any such toy should also be subjected to tests with
saline solution and acid, to mimic the effects of saliva and stomach
acid.

Lead toys aren't the main source of lead poisoning for the estimated
434,000 young children currently believed to suffer it. By far, the
biggest risk still comes from deteriorating lead paint in older
housing.

Many other uses, such as in gasoline and in color ink used in
newspapers and comic books, were eliminated by the 1980s, as lead's
dangers came to be recognized.

But other uses linger. In some parts of the country, the CDC says, up
to a third of lead-poisoning cases are believed linked to
"nonessential" items decorated with or made of lead, such as eating
and drinking utensils, toys and cosmetics.

It's time to eliminate the whole list.

  

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