After Flint Water Crisis, Pediatricians Call to Better Protect Children From Lead

— -- A national pediatrician group is calling for the medical community and government leaders to make major changes to reduce the amount of lead to which children can be exposed.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a statement in the journal Pediatrics calling for stricter regulations and expanding federal resources to help prevent poisoning and exposure to lead -- a known cause of brain damage -- in children. The announcement comes as the city of Flint, Michigan continues dealing with the aftermath of a change in the source of its municipal water system that resulted in elevated lead levels, exposing children to the neurotoxin.

Dr. Aparna Bole, Medical Director of Community Integration at University Hospitals at Rainbow Babies & Children’s in Cleveland, said that the Flint crisis helped draw the public’s attention to the ongoing problem.

“What this policy statement is calling out is that primary prevention is what we should be focusing on,” Boyle told ABC News. “Many of our efforts responding to lead poisoning, we wait for the child to be identified before we intervene."

"We need to take stronger steps to prevent that exposure in the first place,” Boyle added.

While the AAP has said in the past there is "no safe" level of lead, previous AAP guidelines had identified 10 micrograms of lead per deciliters of blood as a "level of concern."

However, the group now believes even half that amount can pose problems. They said new studies have shown children have increased risk for multiple developmental and behavioral problems including lowered IQ, hyperactivity and aggression, when they have under 5 microcrams of lead per deciliter of blood.

“We now know that there is no safe level of blood lead concentration for children, and the best ‘treatment’ for lead poisoning is to prevent any exposure before it happens,” Dr. Jennifer Lowry, chair of the AAP Council on Environmental Health and an author of the policy statement, said today. "Most existing lead standards fail to protect children. They provide only an illusion of safety. Instead we need to expand the funding and technical guidance for local and state governments to remove lead hazards from children's homes, and we need federal standards that will truly protect children."

To combat lead exposure in children, the AAP has made multiple recommendations including having the federal government provide more resources and funding for housing agencies to continue lead poisoning prevention, for the CDC to monitor national lead exposures and help formulate interventions and for local and state governments to collect, analyze and publish blood lead test results.

The AAP is also calling for state and federal governments to provide resources for children found to have raised lead levels in their blood, above 5 micrograms per deciliter.

For doctors, the AAP now recommends pediatricians screen children between 12 and 24 months for elevated blood lead concentrations if they live in areas where 25 percent or more of housing was built before 1960. The AAP estimated approximately 37 million homes in the United States still contain lead-based paint.

"Eliminating lead from anywhere children can be exposed to it should be a national priority," AAP President Dr. Benard Dreyer, said in a statement today. “The drinking water crisis in Flint was just one indication of how our country’s aging infrastructure is jeopardizing children’s health, especially in areas already dealing with toxic effects of poverty."