What Educators Need to Know about Lead Poisoning in Children
Lead poisoning has been called a silent epidemic because its effects, especially on children, are often not recognized. But lead poisoning harms some 240,000 children in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is especially dangerous to the developing brains and nervous systems of unborn children and children under six years old.
Lead poisoning causes serious, permanent damage to children's ability to think, to learn, and to behave appropriately. It has been associated with lower IQ scores and lower scores on standardized performance tests, as well as
- Attention problems
- Increased impulsiveness and distractibility
- Reduced organizational ability and persistence
- Difficulty following directions
- Disruptive behavior
A study by the Children's Environmental Health Initiative at Duke University (2011) has documented the harmful effects of lead exposure (even at low levels) on children's reading and mathematics scores on the Connecticut Mastery Test.
This training has been designed to raise educators' awareness of lead poisoning and enhance their ability to respond to the needs of children harmed by lead.
| "The education community has not really understood the dimensions of this [problem] because we don't see kids falling over and dying of lead poisoning in the classroom. But there's a very large number of kids who find it difficult to do analytical work or [even] line up in the cafeteria because their brains are laden with lead." |
-Bailus Walker Jr., 1991
Then dean of the public health faculty at the
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center |
This training addresses educators in the categories below. Please click on the category that best applies to you, to access the appropriate modules.
The complete course takes a little more than one hour.
Additional resources
This training was developed for the LAMPP Project by the Healthy Environments for Children Initiative, Department of Extension, University of Connecticut.
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