How You Can Keep Yourself & Your Family Safe from Lead | NIOSH (2024)

FAQs

How do you keep your family safe from lead? ›

Wash children's hands, bottles, pacifiers, and toys often. Make sure children eat healthy, low-fat foods. Get your home checked for lead hazards. Regularly clean floors, window sills, and other surfaces.

Keep hands and objects out and away from your mouth and nose. Don't rub your sleeves against your face or hands. Wash your hands and face well and often with soap and water. Shower at work, if possible, before going home.

You can use a special vacuum cleaner called a High Efficiency Particulate Air Filter (HEPA) vacuum to clean up lead. The HEPA vacuum has a special filter that can pick up and hold small pieces of lead. Another option is to use a wet/dry vacuum in the wet setting to clean up the wash or rinse water.

Safety leaders are the team leads that others rely upon, to consistently meet the safety goals of the organization. Managers are part of the organization' hierarchy and have defined responsibilities for their segment of the business to include the standard supervisor role with respect to subordinates.

Wear disposable coveralls, shoes, hair covering, goggles and a properly fitting respirator. Only HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) respirators will filter lead dust and fumes. Simple paper or fabric dust masks will NOT protect you from lead dust. To avoid ingesting lead, do not eat, drink or smoke while working.

You can reduce or eliminate your exposure to lead in tap water by drinking or using only tap water that has been run through a “point-of-use” filter certified by an independent testing organization to reduce or eliminate lead (NSF/ANSI standard 53 for lead removal and NSF/ANSI standard 42 for particulate removal).

Too much lead in the body, or lead poisoning, can cause serious and permanent health problems. People who work in jobs that involve lead, such as sandblasting old paint or manufacturing lead-acid batteries, are at risk for lead poisoning.

Some studies have found lead can be absorbed through skin. If you handle lead and then touch your eyes, nose, or mouth, you could be exposed. Lead dust can also get on your clothes and your hair. If this happens, it's possible that you may track home some of the lead dust, which may also expose your family.

If you think you or your child has been exposed to lead, see your health care provider or contact your local public health department. A blood test can help determine blood lead levels.

What should you do if you touch lead? ›

If you think you or your child may have been exposed to lead, contact your healthcare provider. They'll ask about your symptoms and have you or your child get a blood lead test. This test will measure the amount of lead in your or your child's blood.

Ensure workers have appropriate personal protective equipment, such as goggles, proper respiratory protection, coveralls, gloves, et cetera as required by the OSHA Standard . Conduct routine Blood Lead Level testing for workers who are potentially exposed to lead. Make a lead monitoring program available for workers.

Ensuring the business is legally compliant with all health and safety legislation. Working with and training all employees to manage, monitor and improve the health and safety standards in the workplace. Being responsible for all safety inspections in the workplace (for example, monitoring noise levels in a warehouse)

The Patrol Lead Hand is Responsible for day-to-day work assignments to staff and crews, on-the-job safety, record keeping, productivity and quality of work performed.

A lead, also called a team lead or team leader, is a professional who guides and encourages a group of people. They inspire, motivate and provide suggestions to help their team members reach certain goals at work. Companies in any industry may hire leads to guide teams.

Lead in drinking water can cause a variety of adverse health effects. Children, infants, and unborn children are more strongly affected by exposure to lead because their bodies absorb lead more readily than adults. Children's brains and nervous systems are also more sensitive to the effects of lead.

What can you do about lead in well water? ›

Keep your home clean and dust-free. Clean around painted areas where friction can generate dust, such as doors, windows, and drawers. Wipe these areas with a wet sponge or rag to remove paint chips or dust. Use only cold water to prepare food and drinks.

Workers are exposed to lead as a result of the production, use, maintenance, recycling, and disposal of lead material and products. Lead exposure occurs in most industry sectors including construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, transportation, remediation and even recreation.

Lead exposure can result in workers experiencing headaches, fatigue, irritability, nervousness, high blood pressure, sleeplessness, pain in joints, aching muscles, poor appetite, stomach pains, and constipation. If a worker should notice any of these symptoms, she/he should see a doctor.

Symptoms of lead poisoning include headaches, stomach cramps, constipation, muscle/joint pain, trouble sleeping, fatigue, irritability, and loss of sex drive. Most adults with lead poisoning don't look or feel sick.

Ask the Inspector/Assessor to write you a risk assessment report that will tell you if the lead levels in your home represent a hazard and what options you have for dealing with it. The certified Inspector/Assessor can test your paint with an XRF (x-ray fluorescence) machine, for immediate results.

Exposure to high levels of lead may cause anemia, weakness, and kidney and brain damage. Very high lead exposure can cause death. Lead can cross the placental barrier, which means pregnant women who are exposed to lead also expose their unborn child. Lead can damage a developing baby's nervous system.

Dust. Lead dust is the most common way that people are exposed to lead. Inside the home, most lead dust comes from chipping and flaking paint or when paint is scraped, sanded, or disturbed during home remodeling.

Lead-based paint and lead-contaminated dust are the most common sources of lead poisoning. Paint containing lead was not banned in the United States until 1978. Homes built before 1978 have a good chance of having lead-based paint, which can chip, peel or flake.

NIOSH-developed hand wipes as a removal method for toxic metals proved to be more effective than soap and water, and were also gentle on the skin and non-abrasive. The NIOSH-developed wipe resulted in 99.8 percent lead removal efficiency.

How do you identify lead? ›

Lead is a dull, soft, non-magnetic material that turns a shiny silver color when scratched. This means a scratch test can be a simple, quick method for identifying the service line material entering a home or building. If the scratched area turns yellow orange, it is likely copper.

Gastrointestinal decontamination (removal of swallowed lead using laxatives) or. Chelation therapy (a treatment that uses a medication to remove lead from the body when BLLs are very high).

The NIOSH Recommended Exposure Limit (REL) for lead is a Time Weighted Average of 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air (µg/m³) over 8-hours. The required (OSHA) Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) for lead is also no greater than 50 µg/m³ averaged over an 8-hour period.

The first step toward minimizing lead exposure in the workplace is to substitute lead containing materials with less hazardous materials. Lead dust shall be cleaned up with high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtered vacuum cleaners.

Work in areas that are well-ventilated. Wear the proper personal protective equipment (PPE), such as goggles, gloves, boots, and protective clothing, to prevent contact while working around lead and lead dust. In some cases a respirator may be necessary.

The purpose of the lead safety procedures is to educate departments and establish standards to protect workplace employees, building occupants, and the public from risks of lead exposure.

Leaders, at all levels, need to understand the range of health and safety risks in their part of the organisation and to give proportionate attention to each of them. This applies to the level of detail and effort put into assessing the risks, implementing controls, supervising and monitoring.

Lead persons provide guidance, support, and motivation to their staff. They are supervisors or managers who delegate and coordinate tasks and oversee the activities of their department. They manage conflict, monitor processes, represent their team, and hire and train staff to make sure tasks are performed accurately.

A lead position involves directly overseeing a team of employees. They often review the employees' work and provide comments, feedback and tips to help them improve. Most lead positions report to a manager in a senior role and may complete daily responsibilities while the supervisor handles higher-level work items.

To lead by example means to guide others through your behavior instead of your words. Your intention is to inspire others to copy your behavior. The opposite of leading by example is to say one thing and do another.

How do you solve lead poisoning? ›

Chelation therapy. In this treatment, a medication given by mouth binds with the lead so that it's excreted in urine. Chelation therapy might be recommended for children with a blood level of 45 mcg/dL or greater and adults with high blood levels of lead or symptoms of lead poisoning.

Management and Treatment

The effects of lead poisoning aren't reversible. But you can reduce blood lead levels and prevent further exposure by finding and removing the sources of lead from your child's home or environment.

EPA efforts to reduce childhood lead exposures include a wide range of activities such as funding for community interventions and outreach, education and training, surveillance, and regulation and enforcement. Below are some examples of on-the-ground work that is occuring in EPA's regions to help reduce lead exposures.

It is important. Lead is a toxin that is particularly dangerous for young children because of their small size and rapid growth and development. It can cause behavioral and learning difficulties, anemia, seizures and other medical problems. A lead test is the only way to know if your child has lead poisoning.

Regularly wash children's toys, which might become contaminated from lead in soil or household dust. Remove all shoes when you enter the house. Take your shoes off when you enter the house to prevent spreading lead-contaminated dust through the home. Be safe when working with lead.

The risks of lead

Removing, repairing or disturbing this paint through normal wear-and-tear (such as paint on doors, windows, stairs and railings) can expose you and your children to serious health risks: lead poisoning can cause anaemia (a deficiency of red blood cells) as well as brain and nervous system damage.

Lead is still widely used for car batteries, pigments, ammunition, cable sheathing, weights for lifting, weight belts for diving, lead crystal glass, radiation protection and in some solders. It is often used to store corrosive liquids.