LEAD POISONING AND CHELATION THERAPY

I prefer the term ‘poisoning’ over ‘toxicity’ as there are no ‘acceptably safe’ levels of lead in the human body, just as there are no ‘acceptable levels’ of cyanide or strychnine. Low levels of lead won’t kill you with the swiftness of cyanide, but they sure can damage your health, and especially the health and development of your children.

The history of lead poisoning is grim with all sorts of quasi-criminal activity from business and government interests. Lead poisoning should remind us that when business interests are involved, the first victims will be the weakest (children, Black Americans, impoverished Third World countries) and the depth of deceit and chicanery is bottomless.

Although the amount of lead in our environment has dropped during the past few decades, I’m sure you remember that government officials in Flint, Michigan, were found guilty of neglect when it came to testing certain communities (read: Black). Although the jury convicted them of involuntary manslaughter, the punishment was a wrist tap. And if you think inept testing was confined to Flint, this report showed that 33 other cities, including Chicago, regularly hid the facts on lead levels.

It bears repeating: there are no ‘safe’ levels of lead in the human body. Lead can enter you by eating it (children like the sweet taste of lead paint), touching it, breathing it. Once inside your body, lead interferes with virtually every metabolic process you’ve got, which accounts for the huge spectrum of symptoms that occur from chronic lead poisoning. Both inorganic and organic forms of lead are dangerous, but organic lead absorbs quickly and is fat soluble, so it enters your brain and nervous system, especially the developing brain of young children.

The naive ask, “Hey, it’s 2024, how could I possibly get lead in my body?” Well, you could be rehabbing that old house painted with multiple coats of lead based paint, sandpapering the wood to its original finish, dust is flying everywhere and you’re breathing it. You could be living near a long forgotten lead smelting plant that no one ever bothered to clean up. Your toddler could be gnawing on a brightly painted toy from China. If you’re a gun enthusiast, you might not have known that in 2017, Trump reversed the Obama ban on lead containing bullets. This seemed fine with gun enthusiasts. After Googling “are lead bullets safe?” up popped, “I shoot thousands a week from my AK-15 and I’m fine.” Now I have to admit that reading that sentence, then reading the Mother Jones article below sent a shiver down my spine.

Actually, issues with lead go back to ancient times. The Romans loved the stuff: pipes, bathtubs, cookware were all lead lined. One theory for the decline of the Roman Empire was population-wide lead poisoning. They even sweetened their wine with it. By the way, the Latin word for ‘lead’ is Plumbum, brought to modern times as ‘plumbers.’

With the start of the Industrial Revolution, lead entered our lives in serious ways. Despite all sorts of warning signs of illness (especially mental illness) among workers, lead industry moguls would join those from the tobacco industry and the radium watch dial industry, almost always in cahoots with bribed medical professionals to swear their products were safe.

Here are some Dutch Boy lead paint ads directed at children you might ‘enjoy’. The most dangerous source of lead for Americans came when an incredibly toxic product called tetraethyl lead was discovered to work well as a gasoline additive to prevent engine knock. Until the 1970’s, the “Premium” pump at every gas station, was labelled “ethyl.” The service station attendant (yes, Virginia, there were men who pumped your gas) would ask “regular” or “ethyl.” Choosing the latter poured lead into the environment, into drinking water, and into us.

When scientists discovered the toxicity of ‘ethyl,’ the company, the Ethyl Corporation, a joint venture between Standard Oil and General Motors, spent millions in an attempt to keep this information from going public. Fortunately, they lost, but many forms of lead are still with us today and the corporation today keeps a very low profile.

I discussed the many symptoms of chronic lead poisoning in last week’s Health Tip. These include both psychological (depression, mania, memory loss in adults, poor learning, lower IQs and ADD in children) and physical (chronic fatigue, vague digestive symptoms, high blood pressure, susceptibility to infections, peripheral neuropathy, anemia). Here’s a Mother Jones article linking lead levels to inner-city violent crime.

Although there are definite guidelines for testing children for lead poisoning (if you have kids, your pediatrician likely tested your child already), such guidelines do not exist for adults. The current recommendation is to test those individuals whose occupation puts them around lead. Of course, such limits overlooks home rehabbers, auto mechanics (batteries contain lead), or if you didn’t know you lived near contaminated air, water or soil. In other words, neither the doctor nor the patient thinks that chronic lead toxicity is a diagnostic possibility so tests are neither ordered nor requested. Here’s a screening questionnaire aimed at parents for their children but perfectly applicable to adults.

Because Chicago has the most lead service lines (400,000!) of any major city and Illinois has the most miles of lead pipes in the U.S., (amazingly enough) testing your home’s water for lead is actually easy!

You can go to this website and find out if your Chicago home is serviced by a lead pipe AND if so, you can request a (FREE) water testing kit. If you have lead, you can receive a (FREE) water filter and request your service line changed.

For those skeptical of government “anything,” I did all this a couple of years ago. We did have lead, got a filter, and about six months later had out service pipes changed.

What is interesting is how many times I have heard that when lead is found, especially in adults, physicians are unsure what to do next. The answer is a treatment called ‘chelation therapy’ but trying to find a medical practice that does chelation can be a challenge. Lurie Childrens Hospital is familiar with the treatment but across the street, at Northwestern, they’re not.

And just last month Illinois Senator Durbin sent a letter announcing new proactive measures to address lead poisoning.This is in cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which, by the time you read this Health Tip, the United States may actually have elected a President who has promised to “weaken” from “Day One” of his presidency.

Interestingly, when lead toxicity is considered as a diagnostic possibility, it’s a fairly straightforward testing process and treatment possibilities that can use conventional medicines.

Chelation Therapy

“Chelation” is pronounced “key-lay-shun” and derived from the Greek word chele which means to claw. Like a ‘claw,’ literally gathering toxic metals, intravenous EDTA (Ethylene Diamine Tetra Acetic acid) travels throughout your body and over a typical three hour treatment session removes lead, arsenic, and aluminum and then, you pee them all out into your toilet. It usually takes 5-10 intravenous EDTA treatments of EDTA to get all the lead out of you but since EDTA removes ‘good” minerals as well, you”ll need to take oral mineral supplements as well.

Some WholeHealth Chicago patients simply assume they’ve accumulated toxic metals every year or two and periodically schedule chelation therapy for themselves without any testing. Considering our toxic city this is not unreasonable and I am seeing it more often on “anti-aging” protocols around the country.. Although we don’t bill your insurance for chelation therapy, you certainly can submit a claim, especially if you have toxic levels of lead.

If you want to schedule testing, schedule with your WholeHealth Chicago practitioner. Remember, have the City test your water.

Be well,
David Edelberg, MD