Poisoning, Lead Clinical Trial
The purpose of this project is to help families and communities identify and reduce health risks from lead, pesticides and, ultimately, other environmental hazards. We have partnered with the Better Housing League and Baby's Milk Fund in Cincinnati and nationally with the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning and the National Center for Lead Safe Housing. The first specific aim of this project is to evaluate a sampling kit for families to assess levels of lead and pesticides in their home environment. This aim will strengthen right-to-know laws by providing families with tools to assess environmental contamination in their own homes. The second aim is to increase community awareness of the role of environmental agents in developmental disorders, hearing loss and school problems.
A cross-sectional random, stratified study design will be used for this project. All
children who are younger than 5 years of age and have a venipuncture blood sample taken at
the babies Milk Fund Clinic will be eligible for this study. After checking the lists for
errors and duplications, we will randomly permute the sampling frame, stratifying on
children's blood lead concentration. Stratification will be used to enroll about 33% of the
sample with blood lead concentrations below 5 mg/dl, 33% between 5 to 10 mg/dl, and 33% of
10 mg/dl or higher. Stratifying the sample will improve our chances of testing the
predictive validity of home sampling kits to identify children who have blood lead
concentration > 10 mg/dl collected by families. In addition this study will:
1. Develop a pesticide wipe sampling kit to accompany our lead-sampling kit.
2. Evaluate the predictive validity of home sampling kits for lead-contaminated floor dust
to identify children who have blood lead levels of 10 mg/dl or higher by community
participants compared with repeat samples taken by trained, community workers.
3. Evaluate the reliability of home sampling kits for pesticides in dust collected by
community participants compared with trained, community workers.
4. Disseminate data on the reliability of home sampling tests and provide tools for
families to collect environmental samples for large, population-based studies.
5. Develop a Healthy Homes Resource Center at the Better Housing League to disseminate
information to the community about residential hazards.
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Time Perspective: Prospective