Health Effects
Elevated blood lead levels (BLLs) in adults can damage the nervous, hematologic, reproductive, renal, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal systems. The majority of cases are workplace-related. During 2003–2004, the industry sectors with the highest annual average numbers of resident adults with elevated BLLs were manufacturing, 4,622 (69%); construction, 1,252 (19%); and mining, 488 (7%). The specific industries with the highest numbers were manufacture of storage batteries, 2,499; painting, paperhanging, and decorating, 626; and mining of lead ores, 482. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that BLLs among all adults be reduced to <25 µg/dL. The highest BLL acceptable by standards of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is 40 µg/dL. The geometric mean BLL of all adults in the United States is <3 µg/dL.
Read more about this topic: Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology And Surveillance
Famous quotes containing the words health and/or effects:
“At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the laws of man’s own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, consider’d as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of thought to pass from cause to effects and effects to causes, according to their experienc’d union.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)