Study: Nearly 70% of young children in Chicago exposed to lead-tainted water
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Key takeaways:
- Chicago is estimated to have almost 400,000 lead service lines that carry water.
- A study found that 68% of young children in the city were exposed to led-contaminated water.
In Chicago, where hundreds of thousands of households still get water from lead pipes, nearly 70% of young children have been exposed to lead-contaminated water, according to study findings published in JAMA Pediatrics.
The federal government banned lead pipes in 1986 to combat their ill effects on people’s health, particularly in underserved communities, but many cities still have them, according to Benjamin Huynh, PhD, an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and colleagues.
According to the researchers, Chicago is estimated to have nearly 400,000 lead service lines — one line serves approximately one household — the most of any U.S. city. Lead pipes were mandated in the city until the 1986 federal ban.
“The extent of lead contamination of tap water in Chicago is disheartening — it’s not something we should be seeing in 2024,” Huynh said in a press release.
Huynh and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional retrospective study of data from 38,385 household lead tests collected in Chicago from January 2016 to September 2023, when households could register for free self-administered testing service for lead exposure.
The tests, which encompassed 12,139 census blocks and at least 14,673 unique addresses, involved three draws of water measuring lead concentrations in stagnant water, water flushed for 2 minutes, and water flushed for 5 minutes.
The researchers also obtained sociodemographic information using 5-year estimates from the 2021 American Community Survey and the 2020 U.S. Census; tract-level metrics from the Chicago Health Atlas; responses to the Healthy Chicago Survey in 2021 and 2022, and machine learning and microsimulation to estimate lead exposure in the city’s children.
Based on the data, they estimated that 68% (95% uncertainty interval, 66%-69%) of children aged younger than 6 years in Chicago were exposed to lead-contaminated water, corresponding to an estimated 129,000 children (95% uncertainty interval, 128,000-131,000 children).
An estimated 75% of 33,786 residential census blocks in Chicago have lead-contaminated water, and an estimated 9% of exposed children used unfiltered tap water as their primary drinking water source, which researchers wrote could result in an 103% increase in blood lead levels (BLLs) after 150 days of exposure.
“Increased BLLs in children can cause deficits in cognitive development and other adverse health outcomes,” the authors wrote. “The impact of low-level, long-term exposure to lead-contaminated drinking water may not be easily identifiable at the individual level. Instead, it could cause population-level increases in adverse health outcomes, such as lower population-level mean IQ or increased preterm births.”
Huynh and colleagues also noted racial inequities in both testing rates and exposure levels, including decreases in testing and an increased likelihood of lead-contaminated water in Black and Hispanic populations.
“Levels of widespread childhood lead exposure, such as those found in this study, are symptomatic of structural marginalization and are likely preventable through large-scale interventions to replace lead service lines and improve access to testing,” they wrote. “The benefits of harm-reduction strategies, such as lead filtration technology and anticorrosive agents to prevent lead leaching into water, should also be studied and explored.”
References:
Huynh BQ, et al. JAMA Pediatr. 2024;doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.0133.
Study estimates nearly 70 percent of children under six in Chicago may be exposed to lead-contaminated tap water. https://www.newswise.com/articles/study-estimates-nearly-70-percent-of-children-under-six-in-chicago-may-be-exposed-to-lead-contaminated-tap-water. Published Mar. 18, 2024. Accessed Mar. 20, 2024.
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