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Why Some Children Can't
Learn
Chapter 2 of A Strange Ignorance
For more articles on disabilities and special ed visit
www.bridges4kids.org.
On January 20, 2000, Jim Haner of The Baltimore Sun wrote
about the travail of a young student there:
Kyle Bridges lay down in the middle of McCulloh Street on his
way to school last October. He rested his too-small head on
his book bag. And he told his little brother to go on without
him. "I'm sick of living," his brother recalled him saying.
"I'm just gonna wait here till a truck comes and runs me over.
Don't worry, I just want to die."
Kyle can barely read a word more than three letters long. He
cannot do math at all, not even two plus two. He was in
special education, but nothing the teachers tried or said
seemed to stick. He was a playground outcast at Dr. Rayner
Browne Elementary School, Booker T. Washington Middle and
Highlandtown Middle.
Ridiculed as a 'retard,' he would lapse into confused and
embarrassed gibberish. Under stress, he was prone to lash out
at other kids, his teachers, his grandmother. For as far back
as anyone can remember, he has had an explosive temper. Kyle
is 12 years old. His small body is loaded with lead, ingested
in a succession of East Baltimore slum houses toxic with
peeling paint and dust.
"Lead is associated with most of the problems this child has
had in his life," says Dr. Paul Law, Kyle's physician at Johns
Hopkins Hospital's Harriet Lane children's clinic. "And it's
certainly the most consistent and prominent feature of his
personal history. It's all over his chart."
Once ingested, lead inhibits a child's ability to absorb iron,
one of the basic building blocks of brain, nerve and bone
development. It also stunts a broad range of chemical
transmitters that affect hearing, sight and perception.
The resulting brain and nerve damage, experts say, can trigger
a cascade of secondary effects that include learning
disabilities, hyperactivity, increased aggression and a
greater likelihood of criminal behavior. While treatment can
reverse some damage, long-term exposure can cause lifelong
deficits.
In Baltimore, lead exposure constitutes an epidemic that
strikes more than 7,000 children every year and is a
contributing factor in the city's crisis of violent crime,
failing schools and disintegrating neighborhoods, experts say.
Children who suffer from lead poisoning, in fact suffer. They
feel ill ("somatic complaints"), they know their brains do not
function properly, they are frustrated by their inability to
learn, and they feel a daily unease and agitation from the
irritating presence of lead in their brain tissues. The
presence of lead in the tissues is called a "lead burden" by
researchers but it is a real physical burden for these
children in many ways.
Research says their motor skills are affected, they have a
debilitating attention problem, and that the chemical
imbalance in their brain leads them to extreme behaviors in
order to counter the agitation of that imbalance. Some
discover that certain illegal drugs tend to moderate the
agitation, often resulting in illegal drug use and the
collateral problems of criminality.
The body excretes very little lead once it is incorporated
into body tissues. Chelation therapy can remove lead still in
the blood, but not lead already incorporated into body
tissues. There was some hope for a few years in the late 1990s
that a new drug called Succimer would reverse the effects of
lead poisoning. The study was completed in 2001 and it failed.
There is nothing that can be done once the brain damage
occurs.
Over ten years ago, the 1991 Newsweek article explained
Why is lead so toxic? The body, in effect, mistakes it for
calcium. The lead attaches to and disrupts enzymes essential
to functioning of the brain and other cells. Because lead is
an element, it never decomposes into another, more easily
tolerated, substance. While it can be removed from the
bloodstream through chelation, most of the lead that is
absorbed into a child's brain sits there, literally, forever.
A recent study explaining how lead creates brain damage
(Neuroscience, Volume 99, No. 2, 2000, pp. 233- 242) was
summarized by a Crime-Times.org/issues.htm">Crime-Times
newsletter:
Studying the deleterious effects of lead on learning and
behavior, researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have
identified one mechanism by which lead impairs the function of
brain cells.
Michelle Nihei and colleagues tested rats with blood lead
levels comparable to those of children suffering from lead
toxicity. As expected, the lead-exposed rats performed more
poorly than non-exposed rats in a test of learning, involving
finding a hidden platform in a pool of opaque water. Testing
another group of rats, the researchers found that the neurons
of lead-exposed rats were unable to establish strong
connections in response to conditioning.
Molecular studies of a third group of lead-exposed rats
revealed that the effects of lead were due to the inhibition
of the NMDA receptor, which plays a key role in learning.
Normally, the NMDA receptor is triggered when it receives two
incoming signals—for instance, messages resulting from the
sight of snow and the sensation of coldness—and initiates
chemical changes that lead to memory formation.
"We believe that lead, by decreasing these NMDA receptors, is
interfering with calcium's entry into the neuron," says Nihei.
"This is noteworthy since calcium is responsible for a huge
cascade of cellular signals that ultimately propagate
information and continue the nerve impulse on to the next
synapse and neuron." (Crime Times, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2001 Page
3&6)
"... especially if the child can't seem to learn, no matter
how hard he or she tries."
-the characteristic signature of lead poisoning
Research that finds lead "interfering" with "a key role in
learning" in rats explicates that not "All Children Can Learn"
if they have been poisoned by environmental lead. What this
research indicates is that children who have lead poisoned
brains have a vastly diminished capacity to learn. A
diminished capacity not from lack of effort, or lack of
instruction, but simply because the tissues in the brain lack
the physiological ability to perform the chemically based
process necessary for learning.
As far back as the July 15, 1991, Newsweek magazine cover
story "Lead And Your Kids," there was widespread public
awareness of this diminished capacity:
Only in the past decade have researchers focused on how lead
damages development, even when kids don't show obvious medical
symptoms. In the 1970s, the CDC defined lead poisoning as
occurring when a child had 30 micrograms of lead per deciliter
of blood, the level at which problems like anemia, stomach
ailments and noticeable learning troubles appear. But a 1979
study by Dr. Herbert Needleman, then a physician at Children's
Hospital in Boston, found that asymptomatic working-class
children in Chelsea and Somerville, Mass., who had higher lead
residues in their teeth performed worse on IQ and development
tests than those with less lead. A subsequent follow-up study
showed that children with lead levels equal to 25 to 35
micrograms/dL were six times more likely to have reading
disabilities and seven times more likely to drop out of high
school.
The Needleman study was one of the first that tried to factor
out other possible explanations such as family stimulation and
parental IQ, and it triggered a wave of research on the
low-level effects of lead. A 1987 study of 249 mostly middle-
and upper-middle-income infants in the Boston area reported
that those exposed to 10 to 25 micrograms/dL of lead in the
womb lost four to six points on developmental tests measuring
memory, learning and tasks like putting pegs into a board or
naming parts of a doll. A 1987 study of 501 children in
Edinburgh, Scotland, found that those with average blood
levels of 11 micrograms/dL suffered similar intelligence
losses, while another Scottish study reported that children
with slightly elevated blood-lead levels were more likely to
be considered hyperactive or aggressively antisocial by their
teachers.
The diminished mental capacity of children exposed to lead is
muffled because they seem to be normal kids. The key word is
"asymptomatic" because what hides the horror of chronic lead
poisoning is it usually occurs without symptoms, and what
symptoms do occur often mimic other ailments. Children
suffering from lead poisoning are labeled as colic, or
hyperactive, or misbehaving, or inattentive. Lead poisoned
children go to schools and are expected to perform
academically as if nothing was wrong. As the politicians say,
"All Children Can Learn." But can they really, if they have
been poisoned?
The ferocity of the lead problem defies understanding by those
who fail to appreciate how the cumulative affects of lead can
build year after year, and that it is a known neurotoxin. Lead
toxicity does not just occur when lead is ingested. Lead
remains toxic in the blood, in the bones, in the brain, and
other parts of the body in which it becomes incorporated, and
this toxicity slowly increases with each new exposure. Studies
have shown that lead in the bones of mothers, ingested perhaps
in their youth, becomes "mobilized" during pregnancy and
affects their fetus, poisoning its development (see: "Legacy
of Lead" Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 109:5 May
2001, pg A224).
Similarly, Crime-Times, an Arizona based national newsletter
devoted to "Linking Brain Dysfunction to
Aberrant/Criminal/Psychopathic Behavior," (Volume 4, No. 4,
pp. 1&2) reported on a 1997 study in Mexico (Pediatrics,
Volume 100, No. 5, November 1997, pp. 856-862) that
T. Gonzalez-Cossio and colleagues recently tested 272
mother-infant pairs, and found that the mothers' tibia lead
levels correlated inversely with their infants' birth weight.
"Because lead remains in bone for years to decades," they say,
"mobilization of bone lead during pregnancy may pose a
significant fetal exposure with health consequences, long
after maternal external lead exposure has declined."
Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences' Commission on
Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education issued a report
titled "Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education"
that states "Interestingly, the incidence for low birthweight
for babies of African-born Black women more closely resembles
that of U.S.-born whites than of U.S.-born Blacks" (page 3-4).
One commonality between "African-born Black women" and
"U.S.-born whites" is their general lack of exposure to
environmental lead.
The Southwest Human Development organization and Arizona's
Children's Action Alliance jointly published a 33- page
booklet in February, 2001, titled "Make Kids Count: Giving
Babies a Smart Beginning" which devoted its first chapter to
"The Brain." In the first paragraph of this first chapter it
states:
Recent scientific research concludes that 90 percent of brain
development occurs between birth and age three. At birth, the
human brain is not developed. Newborns start out with about
100 billion neurons (brain cells), which are the basic
building blocks of the brain, and about 50 trillion synapses,
or connections, among them. In the first year, the number of
synapses increases to 500 trillion.
Unfortunately, other than a vague reference in the booklet's
second chapter to "… exposure to environmental toxins…" there
is no reference to lead poisoning. Yet it is "between birth
and age three" that lead does the most damage (lead creates
brain damage at all ages, but brain development is more rapid
and more fundamental in the first three years).
Dr. Patricia M. Rodier, a researcher in the Department of
Obstetrics/Gynecology at the University of Rochester, New
York, made a presentation at a 1994 symposium on "Preventing
Child Exposures to Environmental Hazards: Research and Policy
Issues." Her presentation, titled "Developing Brain as a
Target of Toxicity," (as reported by a 1995 National Institute
of Environmental Health Sciences abstract) stated:
The blood-brain barrier is not fully developed until the
middle of the first year of life. The number of synaptic
connections between neurons reaches a peak around age two and
is then trimmed back by about half. Similarly, there is great
postnatal activity in the development of receptors and
transmitter systems as well as in the production of myelin. ….
toxic substances such as lead, seem to have their greatest
effects during even later stages of brain development, perhaps
by interfering with the trimming back of connections. (see at:
http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1995/Suppl-6/rodier-abs.html)
A 1996 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
abstract of a 1995 presentation by Robert A. Goyer, one of
their scientists, at a symposium on "Toxicology and Chemistry
of Metals" stated:
Experimental studies have shown that the developing nervous
system is particularly sensitive to the toxic effects of lead
and that a large number of the effects in the nervous system
are due to interference of lead with biochemical functions
dependent on calcium ions and impairment of neuronal
connections dependent on dendritic pruning. (see at:
http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1996/104-10/goyerabs.html)
Both the "trimming back of connections" and "dendritic
pruning" refer to the same process of mental development that
only occurs in the first three years of brain development. The
interference with this process by lead poisoning during the
first three years of life results in permanent brain damage,
and an improperly "wired" brain. The consequences of this
subtle damage are not subtle. Research is discovering that
severe social and educational problems stem from this early
interference with brain development.
The 1991 Newsweek article noted that the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) had been lowering 'acceptable' lead
levels because lead is so poisonous.
In the 1970s, the CDC defined lead poisoning as occurring when
a child had 30 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, the
level at which problems like anemia, stomach ailments and
noticeable learning troubles appear. … It takes strikingly
little lead to cause lead poisoning. … To achieve blood-lead
levels of 35 micrograms/dL, a child would have to eat just the
equivalent of one granule of sugar a day. That's why a child
can become ill merely by regularly touching a windowsill and
then sucking his thumb.
Window sills and dust grains laced with lead are found
throughout low-income neighborhoods in the United States. In
1991 a study of 1,454 Mexican-American children by Roberto
Frisancho and Alan S. Ryan, published in the American Journal
of Clinical Nutrition, linked lead poisoning to reduced
stature of up to an inch. Science News (Volume 140, No. 12,
September 21, 1991, pg 189) reported that
Although the federal Centers for Disease Control considers up
to 30 micrograms per deciliter an 'acceptable' lead level in
children, the high-lead group in this study averaged only 50
to 58 percent of that concentration. Indeed, Frisancho told
Science News, stature-stunting effects appeared in children
with blood lead levels as low as 10 micrograms per deciliter
--- one-third the level previously reported to affect stature.
In 1992, researchers reported in The New England Journal of
Medicine (Volume 327, No. 18, October 29, 1992, pp. 1279-1284)
of a study done in Port Pirie, Australia, that measured IQ
scores in 494 seven-year-old children. They reported
For an increase in blood lead concentration from 10 micrograms
per deciliter to 30 micrograms per deciliter … the estimated
reduction in the IQ of the children was in the range of 4.4
points to 5.3 points. This reduction represents an approximate
deficit in IQ of 4 to 5 percent.
But it turns out new findings show this research missed the
worst damage because it presumed a 10 microgram base. Dr.
Bruce Lanphear, M.D., M.P.H., a physician in Cincinnati
Children's division of General and Community Pediatrics,
presented a paper at the April, 2001, Pediatric Academic
Societies annual meeting. According to a press release issued
by the Pediatric Academic Societies:
Dr. Lanphear and his research colleagues studied 276
6-month-old children born in five hospitals in Rochester, NY.
They measured blood lead at 6, 12, 18, 24, 26, 48 and 60
months of age. A standard IQ test (Stanford-Binet IV) was
administered when the children reached 60 months. Among all
children studied, there was on average a 5.5 point reduction
in IQ for every 10 micrograms per deciliter increase in blood
lead. But for children who had blood lead less than 10
micrograms per deciliter, there was an 11.1 point reduction in
IQ for the initial 10 microgram per deciliter increase in
blood lead.
In other words, while other studies had shown a 5 to 6 point
decline in I.Q. when blood lead levels increased from above 10
micrograms to above 20 micrograms, this loss occurred after
the most severe damage occurred at the lower levels of lead
exposure below 10 micrograms.
Since a normal IQ equals 100 points, a 10 percent loss is a 10
point loss in IQ. The standard deviation for IQ is
approximately 15 points, which means two-thirds of the
population have an IQ of between 85 to 115 (i.e. plus and
minus one standard deviation). It also means that virtually
nobody has an IQ below 55, three standard deviations below the
average. A 10 point loss in IQ represents a substantial change
in intelligence, equivalent to losing over one-fifth of the
entire normal intelligence of a human being. It means many
children born with normal intelligence become mildly retarded
due to lead poisoning, and the mildly retarded become severely
retarded.
A public health official in Philadelphia told me that he
commonly finds people pooh-poohing even a 5% IQ loss, but in
his lectures to doctors at medical schools he gets his point
across by asking them how much they would give for a 5%
increase in IQ. A graphical interpretation of such a loss
among a general population is available at the website http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/behavior/iqshift.htm
demonstrating the particular loss of leaders, intellectuals,
and other high intelligence human capital to that population.
During the 1990s, as more research on environmental toxins
accumulated, the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
lowered its level of lead toxicity to 20 micrograms/dL and
then to 10 micrograms/dL.
the medical research indicates that blood lead levels of 10
micrograms/dL are high enough to cause a reduction in physical
stature and an 11.1 point reduction in mental IQ
But the medical research indicates that blood lead levels of
10 micrograms/dL are high enough to cause a reduction in
physical stature and an 11.1 point reduction in mental IQ. The
latest research makes it clear that the worst damage from
exposure to environmental lead occurs with the initial
exposure below the official 10 microgram level, and subsequent
damage is attenuated. Any exposure to lead by a child "between
birth and age three" is presumed to cause brain damage of some
degree.
The level at which lead poisoning affects school performance
is therefore now believed to have no safe limit. As Charles W.
Schmidt, writing in Environmental Health Perspectives
(Volume107, No.6, June 1999) noted:
"… a majority opinion holds that there is no threshold of
effect in children, meaning that a level so low as to be
without a measurable effect has yet to be identified." (see:
http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Poisoning-Minds.htm)
When children's brains have been built with lead instead of
calcium in their first three years of life, there is nothing
that "failing schools" can do about it, years later, as those
crippled brains malfunction. Only intervention before those
first three years to prevent exposure to environmental lead
will prevent the damage from occurring. Only politicians can
remedy that exposure. By the time the children reach school
age, the damage is done.
The national newsmagazine U.S. News and World Report gave an
example of this in their December 18, 2000, issue:
Theodore Lidsky watches small kids struggle to do the simplest
things. He has seen children who try to copy a drawing and end
up with a vague mess, or who have trouble putting pegs in a
pegboard. These kids, some just 5, likely will fail in school
and flail through life if they don't get help. And Lidsky, a
neuroscientist at the New York State Institute for Basic
Research on Staten Island, knows why. "Lead," he explains. "It
wreaks havoc in the brain."
Dr. John Rosen, one of the foremost experts in lead poisoning
at the Montefiore Medical Center of the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine in New York was quoted in the Albany
Times-Union (September 12, 1999, pages E1, E9) as saying "if
the poisoning isn't caught early the effects include extreme
loss of intelligence and problems with language development
and abstract thinking. … It doesn't actually kill children, it
only kills their brains." Dr. Rosen was twice Chair of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Committee on Lead
Poisoning and described by an appellate court decision as "a
preeminent expert in the field relied on by all the relevant
government agencies to establish the science for the policies
that the government has adopted." (see at: http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/getcase/2nd/case/007511v2&exact=1
regarding U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in CAMPBELL v
METROPOLITAN)
It should not take a great amount of intelligence to
understand that if all low-income children were capable of
learning, they would have been taught by the numerous
endeavors of universities, foundations, government agencies,
and school districts that have made the attempt. Human brains
work by establishing connections between neurons with calcium
ions. When the calcium ions have been replaced with lead ions,
brains simply do not work properly. The evidence is very clear
that schools are doing the best they can to overcome the
achievement gap, but the problem is beyond the reach of the
schools. By the time poisoned children reach the public
schools, the damage is done, it was done during the
developmental stages of brain development and it is
irreversible.
Most of the public is already aware that schools are doing
their best. They made this very clear in the PDK/Gallup Poll
of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools (see:
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0109gal.htm). When asked
specifically "is the achievement gap between white students
and black and Hispanic students mostly related to the quality
of schooling received or mostly related to other factors?" the
public overwhelmingly (parents 74%, non-parents 72%) chose
"Other factors." So far, then, the public has not been fooled
by Talibanic politicians, but the PDK/Gallup Poll did not
explore exactly what comprises these "other factors."
However, the public is beginning to figure that out, too. The
link between so-called "failing schools" and lead poisoning
was recently outlined by a preliminary study performed in
Pensacola, Florida. Parents complained to their state
legislator that lead poisoning was behind their failing
schools. When Escambia County Health Department Director Dr.
John Lanza was asked by that legislator about lead poisoning
in low-income areas of Pensacola with schools designated as
"failing," he assigned a project to a University of Florida
student to compare county blood lead level records with the
test scores of students in failing schools. (see: http://www.med.ufl.edu/ahec/chs/lead.html)
Florida had implemented an assessment known as the Florida
Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT) to label certain schools
as "failing." A Pensacola News Journal article published July
30, 2000, summarized the subsequent report:
More children have been diagnosed with lead poisoning at
Escambia County's poorest-performing schools than at any other
schools, suggesting the toxic substance might be partly to
blame for some of the state's worst standardized test scores
in the last few years. ….
The study, conducted for the Health Department by a University
of Florida medical student, is the first attempt locally - and
perhaps in the state - to link high lead levels with poor
academic performance. Most lead-poisoning cases involve
students at A.A. Dixon Elementary and Bibbs Academy - which
until this year were the state's only chronically failing
schools - and Weis Elementary, which also failed the Florida
Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, last year. ….
Helen Crawford's voice grows soft as she talks about her 11-
year-old granddaughter, Thomeshia King, a former Weis
Elementary student who was diagnosed with lead poisoning four
years ago. Thomeshia's symptoms, she said, were behavioral:
crying spells, acting up in class, difficulty focusing on her
school work. "Oh, she was out of control," said Crawford, 58,
who has cared for Thomeshia since her mother died unexpectedly
five years ago.
Poor attention spans and impulsive behavior are classic
problems associated with lead poisoning, especially if the
child can't seem to learn, no matter how hard he or she tries,
said Dr. Henry Doenlen, a child psychiatrist and medical
director of the children's stress treatment program at Baptist
Hospital.
Read that carefully: when a newspaper reporter investigated
the connection between lead poisoning and failing schools, "a
child psychiatrist and medical director" was matter-of-factly
quoted as defining the characteristic signature of lead
poisoning as "especially if the child can't seem to learn, no
matter how hard he or she tries."
It has long been documented that poverty exacts a tremendous
burden on ill-fed, ill-housed, and often just plain ill
children, and there are numerous social programs meant to
ameliorate these problems. Low-income families often lack one
parent, live in multi-family circumstances in overcrowded
housing, with adults leaving and arriving late at night due to
odd shifts. They are affected by crime, both as victims and
perpetrators, with court appearances, hospitalization and
incarceration affecting the employment and income of these
families.
Politicians insist that these "parental problems" do not
affect the children, that "All Children Can Learn" despite
these "disadvantages." For many in poverty, perhaps this is
true, but social workers have been stymied in addressing the
problems of the so-called "hardcore poor," as if there were
something intractable about their problems hiding in the
shadows. There is an enormous difference between the
consequences of poverty and the consequences of poverty
induced lead exposure.
The issue of health care is doubly crucial because it has been
well-documented that children absent from school more often
tend to have lower test scores than those who attend regularly
(for example, see: http://www.ade.state.az.us/standards/stanford9/stanford9graphs.asp).
There are many reasons why children might be absent from
class, but the predominant one is because the child is sick.
Low-income families that lack healthcare insurance tend to be
sick more often and to have more serious illnesses because
they lack medical intervention. Poor sanitation practices,
often accompanying low-income status, contribute to more
frequent illnesses from food poisoning and disease
transmission. But lead poisoning itself produces a chronic
illness that interferes with attendance.
The Tucson Citizen newspaper published an editorial by David
Murray, director of the national Statistical Assessment
Service, on June 28, 2000, which listed "seven lessons" for
parents to improve their children's academic performance in
school. The first was
Get your child to school every day. Obvious, sure, but
attendance counts. A recent University of Minnesota study
found attendance to be a better predictor of test scores than
poverty. Those with 93 percent attendance aced the
standardized tests. Those who attended only 85 percent of the
time found their scores plummeting.
Perhaps not so "obvious" to Murray is that poisoned children
with lead induced "somatic complaints" may need more than a
prompting to go to school.
In addition, low-income children often attend school as a
family unit: the older sibling assists the younger siblings in
school attendance and after-school supervision. If the older
sibling is ill, the younger siblings may not attend, and if
the younger siblings are ill, the older sibling may need to
stay home to supervise. Thus in low-income families with four
children, these children may be twice as likely to become ill
due to health and sanitation issues, and thus eight times as
likely to miss school because all four children will miss
school if one becomes ill.
More affluent parents will see fewer illnesses in their
children, be able to take "family leave" if a child is ill,
and able to pay for well-care to have sick children
supervised. As a consequence, affluent children attend school
more days than low-income children and are more likely to be
cured and healthy when they return than low-income children.
Many low-income children may be in attendance with pain from
colds, allergies, asthma, ear infections, sore throats,
abdominal upsets, and tooth decay that more affluent children
do not endure. But then, of course, there is lead poisoning
with its constant agitation and typical symptoms of "stomach
cramps, vomiting, muscle cramps."
There is no question that poverty, by itself, creates a
menagerie of difficulties for children. Yet, as troubling as
the "lions and tigers and bears" of other social problems are,
there is mounting evidence that environmental lead poisoning
among the "hardcore poor" is an enormously larger problem, a
metaphorical Tyrannosaur, erroneously believed by many to be
extinct, stalking low-income neighborhoods and schools.
Environmental lead can be considered a predatory poison that
primarily stalks the children of the hardcore poor, while more
affluent children tend to be immune. Affluent families
generally live in newer homes built after lead paint was
banned. Even if the affluent live in older homes, the lead is
typically covered by layers of new paint. The older the home,
and the less it is maintained, the more likely the paint is to
flake, chip, and powder. Low-income families tend to occupy
these older "run down" homes because they are cheaper. Even
so, children whose diets are high in calcium (milk, fresh
greens, etc.) tend to excrete lead, but in children without
adequate diets, lead replaces the missing calcium in bones,
teeth and brain structures.
Thus lead exposure is unlikely to occur in affluent
neighborhoods and even so, well-fed affluent children would
excrete most of what little lead they encounter in life. In
short, lead poisoning requires a combination of circumstances
to exist. Even in neighborhoods infested with the "lions,
tigers and bears" of normal poverty, only certain children
will be mauled by the Tyrannosaur of lead poisoning. For all
but the "hardcore poor, " environmental lead "doesn't exist."
But for a very large percentage of the low-income children in
America, this metaphorical monster does exist, and it is all
too real.
When analyzing the comparatively mediocre performance of
American students in the Third International Math and Science
Study (TIMSS), researchers have noted that most other
industrialized nations have anti-poverty programs for
children, while an inordinately large number of American
students live in poverty compared to the other nations.
Researchers have noted that affluent American schools
outperformed most international schools on tests of math and
science, but that low-income schools in the United States do
not.
Education Week newspaper (April 11, 2001) ran a story titled
"A World-Class Education Eludes Many in the U.S." which began:
"It's official," a suburban Chicago school district proclaimed
last week. "Naperville Community Unit School District 203 is
the best school district in the world." …. The 18,900-student
Naperville district, due west of Chicago, scored at about the
same place as the top-scoring countries in both subjects. The
First in the World Consortium, a group of suburban Chicago
districts, also ranked near the top, as did the Academy School
District No. 20 in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Michigan
Invitational Group in suburban Detroit. The districts are
characterized by low poverty and relatively low enrollments of
minority students.
The 140,500-student Montgomery County, Md., district in
suburban Washington also ranked near the top in mathematics,
but toward the middle of the pack in science. Though some of
the wealthiest neighborhoods in the United States are in the
county, half its school district's enrollment is made up of
minority students, and about one-fourth of its students live
in poverty.
On the other hand, the school districts in Chicago, Miami-Dade
County, Rochester, N.Y., and Jersey City, N.J., all scored at
or near the bottom—in the same range as such countries as
Chile, the Philippines, Morocco, and South Africa. All the
low-performing districts have high levels of poverty and
minority enrollment.
The TIMSS-R results show that 90 percent of the students in
the high-achieving areas scored above the international
average, while only 30 percent of the students in the
low-performing districts reached that level, according to
Gordon M. Ambach, the executive director of the Council of
Chief State School Officers.
Experts who research test scores in the United States have
frequently noted the clear correlation between low-income and
low test scores. Most experts spend their efforts arguing over
whether it’s a minority problem with genetics, or a cultural
problem with family support, or an income problem with
differing resources, but no one seems to consider it could be
beyond that: a consequence of lead-induced brain damage.
Consider, for example, even when comparing European students
with American students of similar poverty levels, what no one
has pointed out, hiding in the statistical shadows, is that
most European countries outlawed the use of lead paint long
before the United States.
The January, 2000, American Journal of Public Health (Volume
90, No. 1, pp. 36-46) published an article "'Cater to the
children': the role of the lead industry in a public health
tragedy, 1900-1955" on the history of lead in paint. It noted:
Outside the United States, the dangers represented by lead
paint manufacturing and application led to many countries
enacting bans or restrictions on the use of white lead for
interior paint: France, Belgium, and Austria in 1909; Tunisia
and Greece in 1922; Czechoslovakia in 1924; Great Britain,
Sweden, and Belgium in 1926; Poland in 1927; Spain and
Yugoslavia in 1931; and Cuba in 1934. In 1922, the Third
International Labor Conference of the League of Nations
recommended the banning of white lead for interior use. (See:
http://www.ajph.org/content/vol90/issue1/)
Therefore, even the smaller proportions of impoverished
children living in dilapidated housing in France, Sweden,
Great Britain, Australia, etc., are not poisoned like
similarly impoverished children living in the "Chicago,
Miami-Dade County, Rochester, N.Y., and Jersey City, N.J."
housing mentioned in the TIMSS comparison. With "socialized
medicine" in most of those foreign countries, even where lead
poisoning exists, the European children would be treated.
Thus international studies comparing academic achievement,
such as the TIMSS test scores, compare poisoned and ill
American children without adequate health care to unpoisoned
healthy children in other countries and conclude the deficit
is because of "failing schools." But there is a Tyrannosaur
sized difference between impoverished children with healthy
brains and those impoverished children suffering brain damage
from environmental lead.
In January, 2002, the National Academy of Sciences' Commission
on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education released its
report titled "Minority Students in Special and Gifted
Education." The committee was assigned the task of
investigating why minorities were found to be over-represented
in Special Education for learning disabilities and
under-represented in gifted programs. The Executive Summary
(see: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309074398/html/) noted in its
first paragraph that
In the low incidence categories (deaf, blind, orthopedic
impairment, etc.) in which the problem is observable outside
the school context and is typically diagnosed by medical
professionals, no marked disproportion exists. The
representation of minority students occurs in the
high-incidence categories of mild mental retardation (MMR),
emotional disturbance (ED), and to a lesser extent learning
disabilities (LD), categories in which the problem is often
diagnosed first in the school context and the disability
diagnosis is typically given without confirmation of an
organic cause.
In other words, the committee found that minority children
were diagnosed with problems symptomatic of lead poisoning by
educators who were ignorant of lead poisoning and made the
diagnosis on the basis of the symptoms "without confirmation
of an organic cause." The education community may be oblivious
to lead poisoning, but the committee was not. Page three of
the Executive Summary states:
The committee's goal, then, was to determine why disproportion
occurs. To address our charge, the committee asked four
questions, the first of which was:
"Is there reason to believe that there is currently a higher
incidence of special needs or giftedness among some
racial/ethnic groups? Specifically, are there biological and
social or contextual contributors to early development that
differ by race or ethnicity?"
Our answer to that question is a definitive 'yes.' We know
that minority children are disproportionately poor, and
poverty is associated with higher rates of exposure to harmful
toxins, including lead, alcohol and tobacco in early stages of
development.
The committee disproved the allegation that educators were
prejudicially referring minority children to special
education. On page four of the Executive Summary the committee
noted:
For example, research that has compared groups of students who
are referred by teachers find that minority students actually
have greater academic and behavior problems than their
majority counterparts.
The committee then stated the obvious for which educators have
proved oblivious: the problem begins before the children enter
school. On page five, in the paragraph just before the
"Conclusions and Recommendations" section, the Executive
Summary reports:
The 'earlier is better' principle applies even before the K-12
years. The more effective we are at curtailing early
biological harms and injuries and providing children with the
supports for normal cognitive and behavioral development in
the earliest years of life, the fewer children will arrive at
school at risk for failure.
In the committee's "Conclusions and Recommendations" section,
after several recommendations for dealing with the existing
problems, the Executive Summary avers:
Biological and Social Risk Factors in Early Childhood
Existing intervention programs to address early biological
harms and injuries have demonstrated the potential to
substantially improve developmental outcomes. The committee
concludes that the number of children, particularly minority
children, who require special education can be reduced if
resources are devoted to this end. In particular, the
committee calls attention to the recommendation of the
President's Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and
Safety Risks to Children to eliminate lead from the housing
stock by 2010.
This was a National Academy of Sciences committee assigned to
investigate why minorities were over-represented in special
education, and the scientists concluded it was lead poisoning
in the housing stock. Although the education community appears
oblivious to the devastating consequences of lead in the
neighborhoods surrounding "failing schools," increasingly they
are becoming the only ones to ignore the obvious.
There are reasons why children exposed to environmental lead
can't learn. They can't learn because their brains have been
damaged by lead. They can't learn because lead poisoning
interferes with paying attention and causes discomfort. They
can't learn because lead-induced ills force them to attend
school less often than healthy children. Scientific evidence
has documented that environmental lead causes academic
failure.
Indeed, the characteristic signature of lead poisoning
recognized by pyschiatrists is "... especially if the child
can't seem to learn, no matter how hard he or she tries."
Unfortunately, it turns out that academic failure may be the
least of the problems induced by environmental lead.
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