What are the symptoms and consequences of lead poisoning in children?

In daily life, lead is a toxic substance, and children are prone to poisoning when lead enters their bodies. Generally, when lead enters children's bodies, it is easy to cause some adverse reactions inside the children's bodies, which can easily affect the children's brains and nerves. Generally, lead poisoning in children's bodies manifests as vomiting, or symptoms such as anemia, which cause great harm to children's bodies.

What are the symptoms and consequences of lead poisoning in children?

Poor appetite, abdominal pain, anemia, hyperactivity, and inattention have all been described as symptoms of lead poisoning, but these symptoms are not specific to lead poisoning. Symptoms of lead poisoning vary in the digestive system, nervous system, blood system, and digestive system. However, when the blood lead concentration exceeds 100 micrograms/liter, it will cause harm to health, but the baby may not have any clinical symptoms at this time. Therefore, it is best for mothers to test their baby's blood lead level once when the baby is 1 year old and again when the baby is 2 years old. There are four main manifestations of lead poisoning in babies:

1. Digestive system symptoms include nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, metallic taste in the mouth, drooling, abdominal distension, constipation, blood in the stool, abdominal colic and preference for pressure, as well as hepatomegaly, jaundice and decreased liver function.

2. Nervous system manifestations include headache, dizziness, restlessness, insomnia, drowsiness, irritability, and in severe cases, delirium, convulsions, seizures, coma, and even cerebral edema and peripheral neuritis.

3. The blood system shows symptoms of anemia such as pale complexion, palpitations, and shortness of breath.

4. Urinary system symptoms include low back pain, edema, proteinuria, hematuria, and tubular urine. In severe cases, renal failure may also occur.

harm

1. Affecting intelligence and behavioral development

We know that after birth, the brain develops gradually, and the content of trace elements related to brain development in the human body also increases accordingly. Some trace elements are essential for brain development. Now there are 8 known types. Among them, zinc and iodine have been studied more in-depth. Zinc can enhance children's intelligence, and iodine is beneficial to children's nerve function. But at the same time, there are also elements that damage children's nerves, namely lead and mercury.

2. Low IQ

Scientific and technological personnel once measured the blood lead levels of 69 newly enrolled young college students aged 14 to 16 at the University of Science and Technology of China, and found that their blood lead levels were between 15 and 90 micrograms per liter, with an average of 26 micrograms per liter, far below the lead poisoning standard of 100 micrograms per liter and the blood lead range of most children in my country. However, their IQ ranged from 109 to 150, much higher than the average IQ of about 100 for children of the same age.

The Special Action Group of the International Programme for Chemical Safety believes that for children aged 4 years or above, for every 100 micrograms per liter increase in blood lead levels, the IQ decreases by 0 to 5 points, with a more significant decrease of 1 to 3 points.

All of the above indicate that it is an indisputable and universal fact that children with low blood lead levels have higher IQs than children with high blood lead levels.

3. Learning difficulties

It is generally believed that the probability of mental retardation in children suffering from lead poisoning is 27 times that of normal children. Compared with normal children, children living in a lead-contaminated environment have an intellectual developmental delay of two years, and their rates of absenteeism and disciplinary violations are twice as high. Among them, the academic performance of children suffering from lead poisoning gradually declines during junior high and high school, and their dropout rate increases significantly. Some studies have found that children with high blood lead levels are 5.8 times more likely to drop out of elementary school than children with low blood lead levels. They have smaller vocabularies and other aspects closely related to learning ability, such as eye-hand coordination and reaction speed to stimuli. They also have lower scores on academic achievement tests, and the difference is more obvious in female children than in male children.