Over 170 million U.S.-born people who were adults in 2015 were exposed to harmful levels of lead as children, a new study estimates. Researchers used blood-lead level, census and leaded gasoline consumption data to examine how widespread early childhood lead exposure was in the country between 1940 and 2015.
Highlights
- Over 170 million of people born in the United States who were adults in 2015 were exposed to harmful levels of lead as children, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, March 7, 2022.
- The researchers looked only at lead exposure caused by leaded gasoline, the dominant form of lead exposure from the 1940s to the late 1980s.
- Leaded gasoline for on-road vehicles was phased out starting in the 1970s, then finally banned in 1996.
- Half the U.S.
- adult population in 2015 had been exposed to lead levels surpassing five micrograms per deciliter — the CDC threshold for harmful lead exposure at the time.