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Abstract
Lead poses a serious environmental health risk to young children, causing such irreversible health effects as mental retardation, stunted growth, and hearing and visual impairment. Studies suggest that various sectors of the public, including children's caregivers, are not sufficiently concerned about this risk or knowledgeable about ways of minimizing it. Because newspapers are one of the primary ways members of the public learn about risks, the authors examined the characteristics and content of 152 newspaper articles on lead to determine when coverage occurred and what information was provided. Results revealed that newspapers most often covered lead as a local news story. Few articles identified children under six years of age as the most vulnerable group or provided important information on health effects, sources of exposure, or abatement methods. The authors' recommendations focus on helping environmental health professionals work with newspaper journalists to improve the information available to the public.
Introduction
Lead presents one of the most serious and well-documented health risks to young children (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [U.S. EPA], 1988). The health effects of lead exposure include mental retardation, stunted growth, loss of motor control, permanent hearing and visual impairment, and, at high-enough levels, death (Needleman, 1990). Lead poisoning at a young age also has been linked with adverse consequences later on in life, such as increased juvenile delinquency, failure in school, and even an increased propensity to commit violent crimes such as homicides (Stretesky & Lynch, 2001).
Children may encounter lead almost anywhere, from their homes to their playgrounds. Lead paint continues to cause most cases of severe lead poisoning in children, although its use was outlawed in 1978 (Needleman, 1998). As older homes deteriorate or are renovated, lead paint may flake, creating a hazard of ingestion by children and dust contamination that is often invisible to the unaided human eye.
In the United States, about 7.6 percent of children under six years of age are estimated to have blood lead levels above those that federal agencies consider safe (the blood lead standard is currently 10 micrograms per deciliter [[mu]g/dL]) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2000). These children disproportionately live in poor, urban areas, and consequently, in some parts of the country, up to 30 percent of children may...