A link to where lead lurks
Lead poisoning is different from other modern health risks, notes epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding. No medicine can reverse the damage and no amount of diet and exercise will help. The only solution is prevention. This reality was at the forefront of his mind last year when he began following the alarming data on high levels of lead in drinking water in Flint, Mich. “Although I didn’t previously work on environmental epidemiology, I couldn’t just sit there doing nothing,” said Feigl-Ding, a researcher with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Nutrition Department. “Working in public health, I just really had to do something about the situation. For diabetes or heart disease, there are interventions to treat it, worst-case. However, for lead poisoning there is not. Lead poisoning’s brain damage in children basically is permanent.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 4 million U.S. households have children with high lead...