Environmental Health

16 Environmental Health: Indoor Exposures, Assessments and Interventions

DISCUSSION

We found the GM PbB for children 12–60 months of age in the United States between

1999 and 2004 was 2 μg/dL and that 20 children per 1,000 had PbB ≥ 10 μg/dL. A prior

study analyzing NHANES data collected 1994–1998 found that 63 children per 1,000

had PbB ≥ 10 μg/dL [33]. Our findings show that 81 children per thousand had PbB ≥

5 μg/dL. Although there is a clear and significant decline over time in childhood lead

exposure demonstrated by these prevalence estimates from NHANES, there is still an

unacceptable number of children who are poisoned each year.

Age, race/ethnicity, PIR, and year of construction of housing all signifi cantly pre-

dicted PbB of children, ...