Lead and Your Child's Health

The most important thing you can do to protect your child from lead poisoning is to find and remove the lead as soon as possible.

Lead poisoning is caused by swallowing or breathing lead. Once it gets into your body, it's poison. Lead can hurt the brain, kidneys, and nervous system, slow down growth and development, make it hard to learn, damage hearing and speech, and cause behavioral problems. Lead can stay in your body for a long time. Young children absorb lead more easily than adults. The harm done by lead may never go away.

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