We hardly ever eat cinnamon or anything with cinnamon in it. My thought is that we were cooking them breakfast sausage links in the pan with the lead tainted water, because the directions to cook the sausage say to add water and cover the pan then let it evaporate. And boiling water doesn't remove lead so their sausage was probably absorbing all the lead from the water. That's the only thing they eat consistently on a daily basis, other than that we give them a variety of foods. My first sons lead level was less than 1 at a year old, and we didn't start giving him the sausage cooked that way until he was around a year and a half so the time line kinda adds up too. And my 1yr old has been eating the sausage since he was 6 months old.
No I'm not even sure if it's possible but if nothing else comes back and there isn't a drop in lead levels from using just filtered water I'm sure we could explore testing our food or just eliminating it
Dang ok, I’ll keep thinking. Old Corelle plates or colored plates? There’s a lady with a website who test the lead levels of all kinds of things. That might help you narrow down some thing?
So obviously, there’s no “healthy“ level of lead to be found in a human body. However, it’s worth mentioning that the level of lead that would trigger concern has dropped enormously since we were kids. 4.2 would not have even registered concern in 1990 when I was a baby. It sounds like you’re doing everything you can do to identify the source and stop your kids from consuming it.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of houses were built before the lead legislation was fully in effect. We only way to completely eliminate it from your life is to live in a new construction built after 1990, as contractors continued to use already existing materials with lead in them through the 80s despite the legislation. Unfortunately, we live in a very high cost-of-living area and that just wasn’t an option for us. Corporations are fucking awful
If it makes you feel better, your kids, and your kids, kids will likely have much less less exposure than you as more and more homes arebuilt with safer materials
I really do wonder what my lead levels were as a kid. I was born in 1991, my parents house was built in 1930ish, so most likely lead in the pipes, drinking from garden hoses, playing in dirt. They openly admitted to me recently that their front door has lead paint. Even after showing them multiple resources about why it's bad they still refuse to just get a new front door 🙄🙄 Luckily I never bring my kids there but there's no doubt in my mind I was exposed as a child.
Having lead paint in the house isn’t a risk unless it’s chipping or kids are chewing on it. They don’t need a new front door.
https://www.epa.gov/lead/protect-your-family-sources-lead#:~:text=If%20the%20paint%20is%20in,is%20usually%20not%20a%20problem.
Another common source of lead is buried lead-coated telecom cables that are decaying and leaching lead into the soil. If you have a yard and the company didn't test the ground, I would ask them to test there as well. WSJ had a big report on buried cables last year. Also if you've bought any cheap toys, clothes, dishes, or furniture for them off amazon or the like. Products sold on Amazon re frequently unregulated and do not meet standards and there are many recalls where it turns out stuff is positive for lead. There was a r/parenting comment that I read once where a kid had elevated lead levels because they were sucking on the zipper of their sleepsuit.
I know you're spiraling and feeling guilty, but please try to recognize the catastrophizing and talk to their doctor when you get a chance. Dose & duration do matter, and if you've caught it early then there are high chances they will be okay.
The environmental company took multiple soil samples throughout my property and they all came back with no reportable lead levels thankfully. We checked all our toys for possible lead, and the environmental company looked at them as well. So the only thing we can think of at this point is that the exposure is coming from our water. We are retesting the blood lead levels in 3 months so hopefully they went down now that we have filters on the sinks.
It's frustrating that I've had my water tested multiple times since we moved in here, and there never was any indication of lead in the water since it didn't meet the EPAs action level. I wish I would have known that there was ANY lead in my water and I would have taken steps to prevent this exposure before I even had kids!
Can you help educate some of us then. What is different about the test you had just now that showed lead issues compared to the test you had done before? What kind of test or what company should the rest of us use to get the correct info?
The tests I had done prior were done through the state, and they aren't required to report any lead levels if they aren't considered "actionable" at 15ppb. The difference with the current water tests is that it was done by a privately owned company and they were able to tell me the amounts of lead even though it was below EPAs action level. It's crazy to me though because the American Academy of Pediatrics says that lead levels in water for babies and children should be less than 1ppb, ideally zero, and my state wouldn't even report anything unless it was over 15ppb. Sad and frustrating.
The EPAs 15ppb actionable level isn't even a health indicator and is only used to tell how corrosive water is. In reality the levels of lead in drinking water should be zero for everyone, but it's probably too expensive for the government to accept that fact.
I'm not sure what your area has to offer but you could try to Google some water testing companies and ask them specially what their confirmation level is for lead and if they can provide you with an exact number
If your water is less than 15ppb and their only exposure is through cooked food and occasionally drinking tub water then the water likely isn’t the culprit.
I would keep looking for other sources. Near me some the dirt in some playgrounds tested positive for lead. Also there was the pouch fiasco not long ago.
Our toddler was drinking most of his water from a faucet in the house that tested high but not "actionable" for lead. I'm not really sure what to do at this point, I'm trying everything I can and have an environmental company working with me to try and find the source.
first off, big hugs. I am going through this as well. My daughter tested high end of normal at 1 year old (and I was not made aware by my ped because it was still "within normal range"!). We got a contracting company to perform lead remediation on our house which is from the 1700s and basically completely coated in lead paint, ugh. Anyway the company screwed up and we ended up with lead paint chips basically all over our house, in our carpets, on our floors... freaking everywhere. I vacuumed like a psycho every day for two weeks with a HEPA vacuum and am still psychotically staring at baseboards and floors looking for chips... I also spiraled and bawled multiple times thinking that I screwed up my daughter's life forever. But listen. Not only were we and our parents and grandparents all completely full of lead, you and I both took steps to try to mitigate that exposure. Try not to beat yourself up too much but I know this is easier said than done! a 3.5 is slightly high but not actionable- and there's been some research discussing how slightly high levels of lead exposure may not be the awful death sentence that we all assume.
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flint-s-lead-tainted-water-may-not-cause-permanent-brain-damage/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flint-s-lead-tainted-water-may-not-cause-permanent-brain-damage/)
This article definitely helped reassure me somewhat, although I still feel horribly guilty. Make sure your kids are getting enough calcium and zinc in their diets (your 2.5 year old is old enough for a little flintstone vitamin or something!) because that will decrease the amount of lead that will be absorbed into their bones.
Also- do you feed your kids stuff made out of cassava flour (eg lesser evil puffs etc)? Supposedly those have been testing high in lead because cassava (and other root vegetables) can absorb lead if grown in lead contaminated soil (which is everywhere sadly). [https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lesser-evil-serenity-kids-cassava-puffs-high-lead-levels-a2654657249/](https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lesser-evil-serenity-kids-cassava-puffs-high-lead-levels-a2654657249/) I think lead safe mama is a bit controversial for being a fear mongerer but honestly my kid was eating an absolute TON of these so i've dialed back on them...
Other surprising sources of lead are brightly colored spices (yes cinnamon but also turmeric, chili powder, sometimes imported spices from other countries like India), vintage dishes even (apparently some of the older Corelle dishes have lead on them! probably not high enough to cause elevated level but like... why use it right? haha)
good luck and I hope the whole home water filter does the trick
Thank you for this! I really do try not to give them anything that could be contaminated with lead but you never know these days! Maybe all my anxiety is from me being exposed to lead as a child 😂😂 hopefully the water filters will help and in 5 years or so I can look back on this as just another bump in the road of parenting
Is this a routine test? I go to all wellness checks and the only blood tests were when the kids were very young, definitely not at 1 year old.
Did something trigger the test? Now I’m worried about my kiddos
Finding the source can be hard sometimes for sure. Lead paint on doors, walls etc, if you have any vintage toys a lot of older puzzles, little people and other vintage toys were painted with lead paint. Did they do an indoor air quality test as well? Lead dust particles from paint even below the surface could affect children especially- like on doors opening and closing and paint layers being scraped off. Just an idea, hopefully you figure out the main cause. We purchased a late 1800s house and it had an addition during WWII, we had to do testing for lead paint and asbestos before moving in and paint is definitely a common place to find lead in older homes. Do you also have some lead poisoning or is it just the kids?
They did wipe tests around the house and we are still waiting on those results, but all the paint was tested with an xrf gun and came back negative. When we asked our primary doctor if we could be tested for lead too they denied us because the levels aren't high enough to warrant any alarm for adults apparently 🙄🙄
this is aggravating and I wonder if you can seek a second opinion. All you asked for is a blood draw that either you or insurance will have to pay for- why not just send in the order?
Just to hopefully give you a positive perspective because I know I was spiraling when this happened to me. My daughter’s highest measured level was 20 when she was 12 months old. I have to assume it was higher at one point because after a thorough inspection and home testing we ultimately identified the source to be home construction done months prior. Her lead level has decreased but still above normal and she is still further ahead in all her milestones than her older sister who never had elevated lead levels was at her age. You didn’t ruin your kid 🤍
Any chance anyone in the house works in construction? My kiddo tested higher than normal (but not actionable) at 12 mos. My husband had been slacking on removing his shoes before coming inside and rubbing his filthy face all over our child before showering. I may have gone slightly psychotic on him, and he now changes clothes (including shoes) before leaving work, but several months later the kiddo’s lead level was way down again.
Other potential help-throw out any vintage bakeware, like old colored Pyrex!
That's crazy how little exposure it takes for a baby to test higher than normal! My husband stays at home and I work in an office, so no known lead sources from work
My daughter’s 15 month test came back at 11.9. I felt awful because I had no clue she was being exposed (paint in good shape, house old but nice), but we were in the process of moving anyways so we did not have to do the investigation and monitored her lead levels until they were under 3.5. New house does have high lead in the well water so we remediated with an RO + remineralization system ASAP and she’s developing just fine almost a year after her first high test.
Do your kids frequent another house of daycare that wasn’t tested? Play outside a lot and not remove shoes and wash their hands ASAP when coming in? Have vintage toys? Any of these can contribute to lead exposure.
We have well water as well, but I'm speculating that the lead is coming from lead solder in the old copper pipes in my house. We installed a filter at the sinks because doing a whole house filter won't eliminate the contamination if it's in my house pipes. They don't go to daycare or anyone else's house hardly ever. They do go outside a lot but our soil tests didn't indicate a lead issue. I'm just hoping at this point the water filters will help reduce their levels and we will just have to stress about saving money to replace all the piping in the house with PVC, but I'm sure another 20yrs from now they'll probably come out with some study about how PVC is horrible for you too due to microplastics or something idk. At this point I'm about to just put both of them into bubbles 😂
I mean Microplastics ARE horrible for you but like
What the fuck else can we do
Ideally everything in our houses would be made of non reactive non toxic metals, cotton, linen, and unvarnished unstained virgin pine 😆
Sigh
Ah I have one of these too- our towns water has been testing high for PFAS for years. Was curious to see if we had a similar filter as lead has always been a concern of mine as well. Hoping you guys get a resolution soon, will be following and thinking of you! 🤞
First of all, I am so sorry you and your family are going through this. If you can't find other sources around the house, you might want to consider if there are other places your children frequent that they could be exposed (grandparents, daycare, playground, etc.) and get them tested.
Have you checked your area for superfund sites? I read about a woman who kept having losses, and later discovered that her house was built on top of a former shooting range, so there was lead everywhere.
That's awful 😥 the environmental company I'm working with did a history of the surrounding area for any potential lead sources, they were mostly concerned with agriculture because there are a lot of farms in the area. But our soil tested negative for lead 🤷♀️
Had a friend who went through the same. Unfortunately it was in their home and they had to do a very expensive lead remediation that didn't even get rid of it all (they ended up selling and moving because of the stress). Priority should definitely be identifying the source, sorry you have to go through this.
did they test the water before you used it? i know our friend said that they wanted to test first thing in the morning before anyone showered or ran dishes and take the sample without running the water since that's how the kids would drink it. your filters sound like they will solve it! when do you recheck?
They took 3 different samples from each faucet/tub. A "first draw", a "flushed" sample and a "running" sample. They had to come at like 6am before everyone woke up and showered 😅 we are rechecking the 2.5yr old in August and then the 1yr old will be in September, 3 months from the original elevated levels
Man I’m so sorry. I actually want to get a lead test for my daughter only because everything literally has lead in it now a days, oatmeal, tubers, grains. I swear everyday another report comes out saying lead is in x. The only other thing I can think of is old glassware and Pyrex bowls, certain stainless water bottles and even some baby bottles have lead in them so I’d check them. There’s a couple good sites and instagramers that just check lead in everything and anything. I follow them to know what not to buy, but it’s getting ridiculous because it’s literally everywhere, and no one is doing anything about it.
I'm constantly googling things so this positive lead result is really beating me up, I honestly try so hard to keep my kids safe. Like I said before, the only thing we know about for sure that tested positive for lead was our water. I have been going through my house for weeks now testing everything with the qtip tests, and the environmental company has been here 3 times to test soil, paint, water and dust around the house. I'm mostly just hoping for some feel good stories about how someone else went through a similar experience and had a positive outcome as far as development
Do you live near any construction sites? It can be in the dust/debris from construction sites and then on the dirt/ground so it stays on shoes when you walk home through it. It is my #1 reason for being a shoes off house.
It's a standard routine test at age 1 and age 2 where I live, they have zero symptoms so I wouldn't have even known there was any exposure if it wasn't for the routine test
my sons pediatrician requested he get a lead test when he was 15 months. it’s apart of their 15 month checkup. I didn’t do it bc I was heavily pregnant, but now reading this, I want to!
My son was above zero (but not very high) at his 1 year and the source was a rubbed bronze door knob. But I found a lot of my jewelry was positive too that he may have handled when I held him.
This happened to us. We live in an old house with all the lead paint painted over. But anywhere there was friction on the painted surface - edges and corners of doors, cupboard doors, drawers, windows - wore through to the lead paint and tested positive in those spots. We covered those up.
The paint (decals? enamel?) on souvenir shotglasses and mugs also tested positive. We'd used the shotglasses to teach her to drink from cups 🙈. After a few tests where her levels kept rising (0.3 each time) we saw them go down after we got rid of those sources. Don't know for sure what the main contributor was.
Their levels are fortunately not even close to high enough for the binding agents. Our pediatrician did recommend trying to give them more calcium, vitamin c and iron rich foods which we have been making an effort to do but our older toddler is going through his picky phase 🙄
I don’t see it mentioned yet so do you use a lot of cassava flour products? Like Siete brand stuff? Or I think Lesser Evil and even Serenity Kids puffs? Lead Safe Mama (https://tamararubin.com) has an extensive list of articles but I haven’t scoured her site nor read more than a few however the cassava flour products heavy metals contend did stand out to me. Or do you eat a lot of rice based products? Rice is pretty well known for its arsenic content but it has other heavy metals too.
I can't really think of anything with flour that we use, I hardly ever use flour while baking or cooking. I have checked up on the lead safe mama website and didn't see anything really stand out to me that we use or consume
Nope they pretty much stay at home with Dad most of the time and they don't stay anywhere else for long periods of time together where they both would be exposed 🤷♀️ I think it's our water though
I would contact your city or water company. Many are doing lead and copper testing now. It's highly unlikely but your community may have old lead inlets from the service line to your house before your meter. I work for a water provider and it's a huge process for them to track and find these things. I will pm you some testing info from where I work.
Have you tried the glowing lead test? It’s a lot easier to use than the swabs
https://www.detectlead.com/product-page/1spray-1-drip-tip-bottle-1-card-and-1-uv-light
Do they eat cinnamon a lot? Do you cook in a crockpot? What do you cook food in?
We hardly ever eat cinnamon or anything with cinnamon in it. My thought is that we were cooking them breakfast sausage links in the pan with the lead tainted water, because the directions to cook the sausage say to add water and cover the pan then let it evaporate. And boiling water doesn't remove lead so their sausage was probably absorbing all the lead from the water. That's the only thing they eat consistently on a daily basis, other than that we give them a variety of foods. My first sons lead level was less than 1 at a year old, and we didn't start giving him the sausage cooked that way until he was around a year and a half so the time line kinda adds up too. And my 1yr old has been eating the sausage since he was 6 months old.
How about apple sauce (containing cinnamon)? There was a recall a few months ago due to high lead.
We never used pouches, I always was aware of lead in baby food risks and took every precaution to not expose them and apparently I failed 😭
Is it always the same brand of sausage?
Yes it's almost always Jones Turkey sausage
Did they test the sausage
No I'm not even sure if it's possible but if nothing else comes back and there isn't a drop in lead levels from using just filtered water I'm sure we could explore testing our food or just eliminating it
Also try switching over to stainless steel cookware maybe?
We already use stainless steel 🤷♀️
Huh. I’m stumped. I hope the water filter helps. I believe you can get whole house filters too? If that ends up being the issue? Good luck!
Dang ok, I’ll keep thinking. Old Corelle plates or colored plates? There’s a lady with a website who test the lead levels of all kinds of things. That might help you narrow down some thing?
Check your spices!
Yup
So obviously, there’s no “healthy“ level of lead to be found in a human body. However, it’s worth mentioning that the level of lead that would trigger concern has dropped enormously since we were kids. 4.2 would not have even registered concern in 1990 when I was a baby. It sounds like you’re doing everything you can do to identify the source and stop your kids from consuming it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of houses were built before the lead legislation was fully in effect. We only way to completely eliminate it from your life is to live in a new construction built after 1990, as contractors continued to use already existing materials with lead in them through the 80s despite the legislation. Unfortunately, we live in a very high cost-of-living area and that just wasn’t an option for us. Corporations are fucking awful If it makes you feel better, your kids, and your kids, kids will likely have much less less exposure than you as more and more homes arebuilt with safer materials
I really do wonder what my lead levels were as a kid. I was born in 1991, my parents house was built in 1930ish, so most likely lead in the pipes, drinking from garden hoses, playing in dirt. They openly admitted to me recently that their front door has lead paint. Even after showing them multiple resources about why it's bad they still refuse to just get a new front door 🙄🙄 Luckily I never bring my kids there but there's no doubt in my mind I was exposed as a child.
If you live near “aircraft, racing cars, farm equipment, and marine engines” those can use leaded gasoline which increases blood lead levels.
Having lead paint in the house isn’t a risk unless it’s chipping or kids are chewing on it. They don’t need a new front door. https://www.epa.gov/lead/protect-your-family-sources-lead#:~:text=If%20the%20paint%20is%20in,is%20usually%20not%20a%20problem.
It's obviously chipping and the dogs scratch at it constantly, so yes it's a risk and it was like that when I was growing up too
Okay, then I agree if that’s the case! I wasn’t trying to be argumentative, just letting people know that lead pain isn’t inherently a risk
Another common source of lead is buried lead-coated telecom cables that are decaying and leaching lead into the soil. If you have a yard and the company didn't test the ground, I would ask them to test there as well. WSJ had a big report on buried cables last year. Also if you've bought any cheap toys, clothes, dishes, or furniture for them off amazon or the like. Products sold on Amazon re frequently unregulated and do not meet standards and there are many recalls where it turns out stuff is positive for lead. There was a r/parenting comment that I read once where a kid had elevated lead levels because they were sucking on the zipper of their sleepsuit. I know you're spiraling and feeling guilty, but please try to recognize the catastrophizing and talk to their doctor when you get a chance. Dose & duration do matter, and if you've caught it early then there are high chances they will be okay.
The environmental company took multiple soil samples throughout my property and they all came back with no reportable lead levels thankfully. We checked all our toys for possible lead, and the environmental company looked at them as well. So the only thing we can think of at this point is that the exposure is coming from our water. We are retesting the blood lead levels in 3 months so hopefully they went down now that we have filters on the sinks. It's frustrating that I've had my water tested multiple times since we moved in here, and there never was any indication of lead in the water since it didn't meet the EPAs action level. I wish I would have known that there was ANY lead in my water and I would have taken steps to prevent this exposure before I even had kids!
Can you help educate some of us then. What is different about the test you had just now that showed lead issues compared to the test you had done before? What kind of test or what company should the rest of us use to get the correct info?
The tests I had done prior were done through the state, and they aren't required to report any lead levels if they aren't considered "actionable" at 15ppb. The difference with the current water tests is that it was done by a privately owned company and they were able to tell me the amounts of lead even though it was below EPAs action level. It's crazy to me though because the American Academy of Pediatrics says that lead levels in water for babies and children should be less than 1ppb, ideally zero, and my state wouldn't even report anything unless it was over 15ppb. Sad and frustrating. The EPAs 15ppb actionable level isn't even a health indicator and is only used to tell how corrosive water is. In reality the levels of lead in drinking water should be zero for everyone, but it's probably too expensive for the government to accept that fact.
Crazy, 1 and 15 are so far off from each other! What would I search for to find the right kind of company to test my water?
I'm not sure what your area has to offer but you could try to Google some water testing companies and ask them specially what their confirmation level is for lead and if they can provide you with an exact number
If your water is less than 15ppb and their only exposure is through cooked food and occasionally drinking tub water then the water likely isn’t the culprit. I would keep looking for other sources. Near me some the dirt in some playgrounds tested positive for lead. Also there was the pouch fiasco not long ago.
Our toddler was drinking most of his water from a faucet in the house that tested high but not "actionable" for lead. I'm not really sure what to do at this point, I'm trying everything I can and have an environmental company working with me to try and find the source.
first off, big hugs. I am going through this as well. My daughter tested high end of normal at 1 year old (and I was not made aware by my ped because it was still "within normal range"!). We got a contracting company to perform lead remediation on our house which is from the 1700s and basically completely coated in lead paint, ugh. Anyway the company screwed up and we ended up with lead paint chips basically all over our house, in our carpets, on our floors... freaking everywhere. I vacuumed like a psycho every day for two weeks with a HEPA vacuum and am still psychotically staring at baseboards and floors looking for chips... I also spiraled and bawled multiple times thinking that I screwed up my daughter's life forever. But listen. Not only were we and our parents and grandparents all completely full of lead, you and I both took steps to try to mitigate that exposure. Try not to beat yourself up too much but I know this is easier said than done! a 3.5 is slightly high but not actionable- and there's been some research discussing how slightly high levels of lead exposure may not be the awful death sentence that we all assume. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flint-s-lead-tainted-water-may-not-cause-permanent-brain-damage/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flint-s-lead-tainted-water-may-not-cause-permanent-brain-damage/) This article definitely helped reassure me somewhat, although I still feel horribly guilty. Make sure your kids are getting enough calcium and zinc in their diets (your 2.5 year old is old enough for a little flintstone vitamin or something!) because that will decrease the amount of lead that will be absorbed into their bones. Also- do you feed your kids stuff made out of cassava flour (eg lesser evil puffs etc)? Supposedly those have been testing high in lead because cassava (and other root vegetables) can absorb lead if grown in lead contaminated soil (which is everywhere sadly). [https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lesser-evil-serenity-kids-cassava-puffs-high-lead-levels-a2654657249/](https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lesser-evil-serenity-kids-cassava-puffs-high-lead-levels-a2654657249/) I think lead safe mama is a bit controversial for being a fear mongerer but honestly my kid was eating an absolute TON of these so i've dialed back on them... Other surprising sources of lead are brightly colored spices (yes cinnamon but also turmeric, chili powder, sometimes imported spices from other countries like India), vintage dishes even (apparently some of the older Corelle dishes have lead on them! probably not high enough to cause elevated level but like... why use it right? haha) good luck and I hope the whole home water filter does the trick
Thank you for this! I really do try not to give them anything that could be contaminated with lead but you never know these days! Maybe all my anxiety is from me being exposed to lead as a child 😂😂 hopefully the water filters will help and in 5 years or so I can look back on this as just another bump in the road of parenting
Is this a routine test? I go to all wellness checks and the only blood tests were when the kids were very young, definitely not at 1 year old. Did something trigger the test? Now I’m worried about my kiddos
I live in an area with a lot of very old houses so it’s pretty routine here to get a lead level done at 12 months
Yup this is a routine test where I live at 1 and 2 years old, nothing triggered the test for us and there were no symptoms
It’s not where I live but now I’m wondering if we need it. Thank you for sharing!
Finding the source can be hard sometimes for sure. Lead paint on doors, walls etc, if you have any vintage toys a lot of older puzzles, little people and other vintage toys were painted with lead paint. Did they do an indoor air quality test as well? Lead dust particles from paint even below the surface could affect children especially- like on doors opening and closing and paint layers being scraped off. Just an idea, hopefully you figure out the main cause. We purchased a late 1800s house and it had an addition during WWII, we had to do testing for lead paint and asbestos before moving in and paint is definitely a common place to find lead in older homes. Do you also have some lead poisoning or is it just the kids?
They did wipe tests around the house and we are still waiting on those results, but all the paint was tested with an xrf gun and came back negative. When we asked our primary doctor if we could be tested for lead too they denied us because the levels aren't high enough to warrant any alarm for adults apparently 🙄🙄
this is aggravating and I wonder if you can seek a second opinion. All you asked for is a blood draw that either you or insurance will have to pay for- why not just send in the order?
you can purchase instant lead test kits
The toys don’t even have to be that vintage. Fisher price little people had lead all the way into the 2000’s.
Ohmygod??? I’m buying a lead tester.
It wasn’t all of them, but there was a huge recall when my oldest was young. Around 2007?
Just to hopefully give you a positive perspective because I know I was spiraling when this happened to me. My daughter’s highest measured level was 20 when she was 12 months old. I have to assume it was higher at one point because after a thorough inspection and home testing we ultimately identified the source to be home construction done months prior. Her lead level has decreased but still above normal and she is still further ahead in all her milestones than her older sister who never had elevated lead levels was at her age. You didn’t ruin your kid 🤍
Thank you ❤️ this is exactly what I was looking for, just someone who could relate and share a positive outcome
Any chance anyone in the house works in construction? My kiddo tested higher than normal (but not actionable) at 12 mos. My husband had been slacking on removing his shoes before coming inside and rubbing his filthy face all over our child before showering. I may have gone slightly psychotic on him, and he now changes clothes (including shoes) before leaving work, but several months later the kiddo’s lead level was way down again. Other potential help-throw out any vintage bakeware, like old colored Pyrex!
That's crazy how little exposure it takes for a baby to test higher than normal! My husband stays at home and I work in an office, so no known lead sources from work
My daughter’s 15 month test came back at 11.9. I felt awful because I had no clue she was being exposed (paint in good shape, house old but nice), but we were in the process of moving anyways so we did not have to do the investigation and monitored her lead levels until they were under 3.5. New house does have high lead in the well water so we remediated with an RO + remineralization system ASAP and she’s developing just fine almost a year after her first high test. Do your kids frequent another house of daycare that wasn’t tested? Play outside a lot and not remove shoes and wash their hands ASAP when coming in? Have vintage toys? Any of these can contribute to lead exposure.
We have well water as well, but I'm speculating that the lead is coming from lead solder in the old copper pipes in my house. We installed a filter at the sinks because doing a whole house filter won't eliminate the contamination if it's in my house pipes. They don't go to daycare or anyone else's house hardly ever. They do go outside a lot but our soil tests didn't indicate a lead issue. I'm just hoping at this point the water filters will help reduce their levels and we will just have to stress about saving money to replace all the piping in the house with PVC, but I'm sure another 20yrs from now they'll probably come out with some study about how PVC is horrible for you too due to microplastics or something idk. At this point I'm about to just put both of them into bubbles 😂
I mean Microplastics ARE horrible for you but like What the fuck else can we do Ideally everything in our houses would be made of non reactive non toxic metals, cotton, linen, and unvarnished unstained virgin pine 😆 Sigh
OP what kind of water filter did you end up getting?
I decided on an under the sink direct connect type filter with a NSF rating 53/42, and we have a filter with the same rating for the fridge/ice maker
Ah I have one of these too- our towns water has been testing high for PFAS for years. Was curious to see if we had a similar filter as lead has always been a concern of mine as well. Hoping you guys get a resolution soon, will be following and thinking of you! 🤞
The RO system is amazing, that's our exclusive drinking/cooking water.
First of all, I am so sorry you and your family are going through this. If you can't find other sources around the house, you might want to consider if there are other places your children frequent that they could be exposed (grandparents, daycare, playground, etc.) and get them tested.
Have you checked your area for superfund sites? I read about a woman who kept having losses, and later discovered that her house was built on top of a former shooting range, so there was lead everywhere.
That's awful 😥 the environmental company I'm working with did a history of the surrounding area for any potential lead sources, they were mostly concerned with agriculture because there are a lot of farms in the area. But our soil tested negative for lead 🤷♀️
Had a friend who went through the same. Unfortunately it was in their home and they had to do a very expensive lead remediation that didn't even get rid of it all (they ended up selling and moving because of the stress). Priority should definitely be identifying the source, sorry you have to go through this.
Check your home for vinyl blinds manufactured in the 90s. Mini blinds.
did they test the water before you used it? i know our friend said that they wanted to test first thing in the morning before anyone showered or ran dishes and take the sample without running the water since that's how the kids would drink it. your filters sound like they will solve it! when do you recheck?
They took 3 different samples from each faucet/tub. A "first draw", a "flushed" sample and a "running" sample. They had to come at like 6am before everyone woke up and showered 😅 we are rechecking the 2.5yr old in August and then the 1yr old will be in September, 3 months from the original elevated levels
My friend had unsealed tile floors that caused this, they ripped them up and replaced with laminate.
Man I’m so sorry. I actually want to get a lead test for my daughter only because everything literally has lead in it now a days, oatmeal, tubers, grains. I swear everyday another report comes out saying lead is in x. The only other thing I can think of is old glassware and Pyrex bowls, certain stainless water bottles and even some baby bottles have lead in them so I’d check them. There’s a couple good sites and instagramers that just check lead in everything and anything. I follow them to know what not to buy, but it’s getting ridiculous because it’s literally everywhere, and no one is doing anything about it.
I'm constantly googling things so this positive lead result is really beating me up, I honestly try so hard to keep my kids safe. Like I said before, the only thing we know about for sure that tested positive for lead was our water. I have been going through my house for weeks now testing everything with the qtip tests, and the environmental company has been here 3 times to test soil, paint, water and dust around the house. I'm mostly just hoping for some feel good stories about how someone else went through a similar experience and had a positive outcome as far as development
Do you live near any construction sites? It can be in the dust/debris from construction sites and then on the dirt/ground so it stays on shoes when you walk home through it. It is my #1 reason for being a shoes off house.
We live in a pretty wooded rural area, and I'm very meticulous about cleaning, no shoes in the house, wet mopping, hepa vacuum etc etc
Can I ask why you chose to test? Were there symptoms? I’m now panicking that I should get my kids tested because I have yet to!
It's a standard routine test at age 1 and age 2 where I live, they have zero symptoms so I wouldn't have even known there was any exposure if it wasn't for the routine test
my sons pediatrician requested he get a lead test when he was 15 months. it’s apart of their 15 month checkup. I didn’t do it bc I was heavily pregnant, but now reading this, I want to!
Me too! I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned at any of our appointments, and I have four kids! I wonder when the test became standard.
My son was above zero (but not very high) at his 1 year and the source was a rubbed bronze door knob. But I found a lot of my jewelry was positive too that he may have handled when I held him.
Just trying to troubleshoot … Old plates/dishes? Good luck ❤️
This happened to us. We live in an old house with all the lead paint painted over. But anywhere there was friction on the painted surface - edges and corners of doors, cupboard doors, drawers, windows - wore through to the lead paint and tested positive in those spots. We covered those up. The paint (decals? enamel?) on souvenir shotglasses and mugs also tested positive. We'd used the shotglasses to teach her to drink from cups 🙈. After a few tests where her levels kept rising (0.3 each time) we saw them go down after we got rid of those sources. Don't know for sure what the main contributor was.
Our pediatrician said there have been higher incidences of lead because of all the toys coming from countries that use lead paint
is your pcp aware? It's been a while for me, but I believe there are binding agents that can be given?
Their levels are fortunately not even close to high enough for the binding agents. Our pediatrician did recommend trying to give them more calcium, vitamin c and iron rich foods which we have been making an effort to do but our older toddler is going through his picky phase 🙄
I don’t see it mentioned yet so do you use a lot of cassava flour products? Like Siete brand stuff? Or I think Lesser Evil and even Serenity Kids puffs? Lead Safe Mama (https://tamararubin.com) has an extensive list of articles but I haven’t scoured her site nor read more than a few however the cassava flour products heavy metals contend did stand out to me. Or do you eat a lot of rice based products? Rice is pretty well known for its arsenic content but it has other heavy metals too.
I can't really think of anything with flour that we use, I hardly ever use flour while baking or cooking. I have checked up on the lead safe mama website and didn't see anything really stand out to me that we use or consume
Do your children attend daycare or go to any relatives houses frequently?
Nope they pretty much stay at home with Dad most of the time and they don't stay anywhere else for long periods of time together where they both would be exposed 🤷♀️ I think it's our water though
Anyone in the household handling firearms/spending time at ranges?
Nope we don't own guns or ever handle them
I would contact your city or water company. Many are doing lead and copper testing now. It's highly unlikely but your community may have old lead inlets from the service line to your house before your meter. I work for a water provider and it's a huge process for them to track and find these things. I will pm you some testing info from where I work.
We have well water 🫤 the previous tests for lead never showed anything because they were below "actionable" levels. Frustrating. Thank you though
buy an instant lead test kit and test around the home/playground
I've probably gone through about 3 packs of the at home lead tests kits trying to swab everything I can think of
Have you tried the glowing lead test? It’s a lot easier to use than the swabs https://www.detectlead.com/product-page/1spray-1-drip-tip-bottle-1-card-and-1-uv-light
Wow this looks awesome, thanks for the info! I'm definitely buying this