How smart is it to let kids play with lead?

• Author: Matter, Gray
• Position: Brief Article

How smart is it to let kids play with lead? In the United States, lead was once a main component of paint, but it was banned after health authorities found that children in old houses or apartments with peeling paint often put the paint chips in their mouths and suffered severe toxic effects. By the 1990s, the known consequences of exposure to this heaviest of all the metals included disorders of the brain, central nervous system, kidneys, and blood cells. Ingestion of lead, whether by breathing or swallowing, could lead to attention deficit disorders, behavioral problems, lowered IQs, comas, and even death. In 1991, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services called lead poisoning the "number one environmental threat to the children of the United...