I thought the article covering the history of led poisoning was very interesting. Like I mentioned in my previous blog post, learning about the toll of these chemicals on children is always hard to stomach. Its amazing how horrible the effects these chemicals can be when they reach people at a young age. I especially thought that the fact that lead can have a negative impact on children's reading abilities was interesting. I struggled with reading as a child and I remember how frustrating it was.
I found the article about the lead poisoning outbreak to be extremely sad and was surprised to see that this incident was as recent as 2010! 400 deaths due to lead poisoning in these villages! It was great to read about the United Nations involvement in this issue though - I thought that the steps they took were appropriate. I was happy to see that they administered a significant amount of treatment but was still concerned at the high casualty rate. This article drives home how dangerous lead poisoning is.
Hi Alex,
ReplyDeleteI agree completely that it is heartbreaking to see how many toxics and chemicals are affecting child health. Hypothetically, if you had children, what would you do to try and reduce the chemicals and toxics your kids are exposed to?
Now that I know about all of these chemicals and the toll they take on children, I am going to try to do my best to prevent my future children from being exposed to these chemicals. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteResponse: Christina
ReplyDeleteUgh - its always hard to read about childhood illness. I think you make a great point about how childhood lead poisoning was only recognized a century ago. Sometime perhaps we get so caught up being upset about how awful something is, that we forget that we only JUST learned about how bad it is! Now, that being said, a lot of these illness might have been prevented if the items causing them were properly tested before they hit the market. Still, its crazy to think about how far and how fast medicine and our ability to pinpoint where these illnesses come from has progressed!
Response: Brianna
Thanks for highlighting the educational component here. I think its our duty now to help spread knowledge about lead poisoning among the communities we live/work in! Help spread the word so that more people can make good choices about these things! :)