Q&A: Lead poisoned 22 years ago

Q: If a person had been poisoned with lead 22 years ago, how do you detect lead in their body now?

Question from Alexandra, King's Lynn, Norfolk, PE31 7PS, United Kingdom. March 1, 2017: If a person had been poisoned with lead 22 years ago, in enough of a quantity (at 15 years of age) to nearly kill them, would there be any way of detecting the lead in their system now?

Additionally, is it true that the body tries to purge itself of the lead in later years?

Thank you for your help.

Best wishes,

Alexandra.

Answer emailed: March 1, 2017.

Hi Alexandra,

Yes the body eliminates a small amount of lead every day so I'll send you our Info pack on nutrition in a separate email. If you regularly monitor blood lead post major exposure, you can learn a lot about what's happening during ageing, but regular bone lead XRF testing in Canada is the ultimate in total body burden assessment so I'll email separately another Info Pack on that.

Please send all blood lead results for graphing, as part of our Blood Lead Challenge (see below).

Best wishes

Elizabeth O’Brien
Lead Advisor, The LEAD Group Inc, Australia

Take the Blood Lead Challenge. Report blood lead results (for yourself and your children) to The LEAD Group and be part of our survey. In return, you’ll receive individualised advice on how to lower blood lead levels, the least well-known but best-researched predictor of your risks of suffering dementia, osteoporosis, brain ageing and early death. Report your blood lead level/s by emailing your scanned blood lead result/s with the date of birth (so we can calculate the age in months at the time/s the blood was taken), to us. Privacy is guaranteed and only a numerical ID for each person, their gender, age and postcode will be included in the blood lead graphs we will web-publish