A new study suggests that racial segregation may be compounding detrimental effects of lead on Black children.
TUESDAY, Aug. 16, 2022 -- It's well known that exposure to lead can harm young children's brain development. Now a new study suggests that racial segregation may be compounding the detrimental effects of lead on Black children.
"Residential segregation is not an accident," said lead author Mercedes Bravo, an assistant research professor at the Duke Global Health Institute in Durham, N.C."It's the result of many years of structural racism that separated people into different neighborhoods." Lead is a naturally occurring metal that can cause serious health effects if it accumulates in the blood. Children under 6 are particularly vulnerable, as lead can damage their developing brains and cause learning or behavioral problems.was once widely used in house paints and gasoline. While those practices were phased out decades ago in the United States, there are still many ways for children to be exposed, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"That's what makes this new study so important," said David Cwiertny, director of the University of Iowa's Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination."These are kids who are already more vulnerable to lead exposure." Bravo's team found that when Black children had relatively lower lead levels , neighborhood segregation had no bearing on their reading test scores. But among Black kids with higher lead levels , those living in highly segregated neighborhoods had worse reading scores. And the higher kids' lead levels were, the greater the impact of neighborhood segregation.
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