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What are the effects of lead poisoning in a child?

Medical professionals, researchers, and public health officials all agree that lead is a neurotoxin that damages the developing brain of children, as well as other bodily systems. Chronic lead ingestion can cause or worsen anemia or iron deficiency in children and harm bone marrow. Evidence of chronic lead ingestion appears in a child's bones. Physical growth and development can be impaired. Language and motor function deficits can occur. The effects of childhood lead poisoning are irreversible in the body. Certain physical consequences, such as impact on kidney function or blood pressure, may not surface until adulthood.

Since the early 1990s, much of the attention of medical professionals, researchers and public health officials has been focused on the impact of lead in the developing brains of children. It is widely known that lead adversely affects children's performance on intelligence testing. In a variety of studies of groups of children, it has been shown that lead exposure negatively affects IQ (the measure of human intelligence) without relation to other factors, such as a child's genetic background or economic status.