Are vinyl lunch boxes a cause of concern for lead poisoning?
ABCs Good Morning America warned that children might be poisoned
by their lunches in its November 4 broadcast, despite government
tests that showed no danger from lunch boxes.
Charles Gibson began the story saying, Nearly half a million
children are permanently injured by lead poisoning each year. The
Center for Environmental Health tested some imported lunch boxes,
and around 15 percent had small amounts of lead. This was
upsetting to reporter Elizabeth Leamy.
Leamy interviewed people who were shocked and found it very
upsetting. However, later in her story she presented evidence that
there was no cause for concern.
She referred to testing by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC),
a federal agency, which found its tests of vinyl lunch boxes show
no such hazardous levels of accessible lead. Then later she said
that the amount of accessible lead is well below hazardous levels.
Those facts came after Leamy reminded viewers that Ingesting even
small amounts can cause developmental problems, learning
disabilities, even brain-damage. She didnt define small amounts
or give the context of how much lead people are exposed to
naturally. The
EPA has set the Action Level for lead at 15 parts per billion (ppb) for home
water systems. People regularly ingest some lead via water or other
ways, but Good Morning America did not offer any comparison
between everyday lead exposure and the amount found in lunch boxes.
Leamy did ask the all-important question, Can hazardous amounts of
lead that come off on food or children's hands and get into their
mouths? Hal Stratton from the CPSC said that We are worried about
lead that is accessible. If theres lead in a product and you dont
get it into your system then its not a problem. It has to be
ingested into your system for lead to be a problem.
CPSCs
Web site identified how
much lead was in the vinyl lunch boxes: The staff tested the inside
and outside of each lunch box and the preliminary results were
consistently below one microgram (one millionth of a gram) of lead.
This is an extremely low level of lead and would not present a
health hazard to children.
Learmy ended the segment showing Gibson how to test for lead in
lunch boxes. The two boxes she tested came up negative.
A Lead Lunch?
November 4th, 2005 2:00 PM
Font Size