Get Your Municipal Water Tested to Prevent Childhood Lead Poisoning

With high-profile water crises in the news lately—such as the one still threatening Flint, Michigan—lead testing your water is a simple way to get peace of mind that your child is not risking lead poisoning. That’s important even if you’re as far away from Flint as Basalt, CO.

Lead poisoning is an extremely unkind form of poisoning, especially to children, where it can lie in wait for years, or cause irreversible kidney and brain damage. And the younger your child is, the more susceptible are its body systems and organs to the effects of lead poisoning. Don’t risk your child’s health by keeping yourself in the dark. Look into lead testing in Basalt, CO.

Lead testing your water

There are a variety of ways to test for lead. You can buy your own test kit from Amazon—there are powders, color-changing strips, even digital water readers that can tell you about the levels of lead and other heavy metals (and even the levels of detergents and bacteria) in your water. There are also services like ours that come in and do a more holistic test in your home, testing your water, your paint and more, looking for the slightest traces of lead. If you live in a city where lead is an issue, there may also be a program where you can send a bottle of your tap water into a state-run lab for testing. A simple Google search will let you know if your city offers such a program.

What if my water has lead in it?

If your water has lead, there are several things you need to do. First, you probably need to contact a lead consulting company. You need to find the source of the lead. It could be the city water, it could be pipes in your home or it could be some other source of contamination. There are now many tests to be run, and they’d be difficult to do on your own.

You also need to quickly get yourself and your children tested for lead poisoning, which requires a simple blood test. In cases of mild to medium lead poisoning, simply having your child regularly checked out by a doctor, restricting their exposure to further lead, and giving them a healthy, balanced diet, high in calcium and iron, is necessary. In extreme cases, they may need chelation therapy, which uses a drug that binds to the lead in their blood and fat tissues and helps remove it from their body.

What are the symptoms of lead poisoning?

Most often, there are no obvious signs of lead poisoning. It generally leads to slow deterioration of the liver and the kidneys, and can occasionally affect the nervous system and brain. But because one of the symptoms is hyperactivity, and most children are just naturally hyperactive, it can be extremely difficult to differentiate between symptoms and normal behavior. This is why it’s much easier to test your home for lead than to diagnose yourself or your children with lead poisoning by checking your symptoms.

An ounce of prevention through lead testing in Basalt, CO

The most important way to prevent lead poisoning is having your house and water tested for lead. A small amount of lead could be manageable, but in extreme cases, you’re going to need a professional lead testing and consulting and removal company to help you. Dealing with lead pipes and lead paint and lead-contaminated soil can be dangerous, and can make the problem worse if you’re not sure what you’re doing. Give us a call here at HealthSafe Inspections Inc. and we’ll get started with lead testing in Basalt, CO right away!

Categorised in: Lead Testing

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