Just A Little More Info About (Yep) Lead

What!?! Not lead again!?!

It's a depressing subject, I know. But there are a few miscellaneous sources of lead found in every household that one should know about and take simple steps to avoid.

Lead, as you may remember from previous depressing columns, is a highly toxic metal. At high doses, lead causes all sorts of gruesome damage like palsy and death, to name two of my favorites. Fortunately, there are very few cases of acute lead poisoning.

The problem is lead presents a "continuum of toxicity." The slightest exposure contributes to an adverse result somewhere in the body, though it may produce no medical symptoms. In children, low-level lead exposure impairs IQ, attention span and reaction time. In adults, it has been associated with hypertension in men and pregnancy complications in women, including minor birth defects in newborns.

Most lead in our environment was brought to us compliments of pre-1978 household paint (some of which contained as much as 50 percent lead), and leaded gasoline. New paint, and most gasoline, is now lead-free. But the U.S. still uses more than a million tons of lead a year in products such as car batteries (this accounts for 70 percent of lead use), construction materials, ammunition, brass, glass, industrial paints, and glazes and inks.

Lead is an element, so it cannot break down into a friendlier material. It is here to stay, and it is everywhere. Ice layers in Greenland, far from industrial centers, reveal a record of growing lead use starting with the Industrial Revolution. Skeletons of our contemporaries contain 200 times more lead than those of our pre-industrial ancestors.

So how can we keep it out of our skeletons?

Two previous columns addressed the biggies - lead in house dust from track-in and remodeling activities, and lead in drinking water. But there are a number of other contributing pathways.

-- That charming Italian pitcher you use could be among them. Improperly glazed ceramic ware can leach dangerous amounts of lead into food and drink. Acidic foods, such as orange, tomato and other fruit juices, tomato sauces, wine and vinegar create the highest risk, because their acids accelerate the release of lead from the glaze. The F.D.A. says ceramics from the U.S., Britain and Japan are generally safe, but warns that ceramics from Mexico, Italy, India, Hong Kong, China and other countries can leach dangerous levels of lead.

Even properly glazed ceramics can deteriorate if washed repeatedly in a dishwasher, or vigorously scrubbed. Wash ceramics gently by hand. And don't use them to store acidic foods.

If you use ceramics from any of the riskier countries listed above, you might want to invest in a simple and relatively inexpensive lead test kit. To obtain it, send a check for $29.95 plus $3.50 for shipping to Frandon Enterprises, P.O. Box 300321, 511 N. 48th Street, Seattle, WA 98103, or call 1-800-359-9000. One kit can be used for about 100 tests.

-- That handsome lead crystal decanter on your sideboard is another pathway. Pour the sherry out, and display the bottle empty. Over time, wine stored in a lead cystal decanter can pick up a lot of lead. Use the decanter for dinner parties, but don't store alcohol in it. If you are pregnant, avoid drinking from crystal altogether. (This will be a hardship, I know.)

After the perils of lead from lead crystal made the news, one manufacturer stopped making lead crystal baby bottles. If your little darling drinks from a lead crystal bottle, switch to plastic.

-- Do you scrupulously reuse the plastic bags that come on commercial loaves of bread? The ink on the wrappers of 18 out of 20 national brands flaked lead paint, according to a study by the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute in Piscataway, N.J. If you reuse bags, be very careful to use them ink-side out, so that food never touches the ink. If you can't tell which side the ink is on, trash the bag.

-- Do you eat a lot of canned food? In 1979, about 90 percent of steel cans had lead-soldered seams. By 1989, only 4 percent had soldered seams. Four percent of several billion is a considerable number of cans, however. Lead detectives Don and Fran Wallace found 49 lead-soldered cans at a neighborhood grocery store recently. Whenever you buy a can of food, check to see the seam is smooth. A bumpy, soldered seam may contain lead.

-- These are grown-up sources, as it were. If you have teething-age children, just about anything can be a source of lead. A friend caught her 1-year old gnawing on cross-country ski-wax canisters that were wrapped in lead. Another friend's child chewed right through a Russian nesting doll. Its brightly colored paint may well have contained lead. Painted toys bought overseas, especially in lesser-developed countries, should be treated as ornaments and kept out of the reach of children.

Follow all of this advice, and you'll still have lead in your body. There is no avoiding it. But just being aware of it may help you keep it to a minimum.

Susan McGrath's column runs weekly in the Home/Real Estate section of The Times. Do you have a question about decisions you can make in your everyday life to help keep your household healthy? Have you found solutions? Send questions and comments to The Household Environmentalist, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA, 98111.