Lead Poisoning in Brazil

Perhaps one of the more overlooked topics affecting Brazilian regions include the issue of lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning first came to health notice in the 1980's when children of growing regions began to suffer from the problem. Complications of the issue frequently involve the economic growth in supplementing lead as the prime basis for much of Brazil's industrial success. However, as poisoning rates began to spread to cattle among other livestock, lead was exempted as an economic success factor throughout the late '90's and instead served as a massive recycling component.

Despite the exemption, during a 2006 NCBI study, ninety-seven southern Brazilian children between the ages of 0 and 5 were tested for blood lead levels after problems arose from an undetermined contaminant location. Medical researchers theorized that of the ninety-seven tested subjects, 16.5% of them were tested for abnormal traces of lead in blood levels. Researchers further theorized that the source of the problem derived from waste recycling activity and high lead traces within soil.

Much of the findings would be utilized and retested for modern analysis in the 2012 work Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, where data indicated that dairy cows were among the risk of lead poisoning. According to the publication, because the dairy cows feed predominantly on plants grown in semi-arid conditioned soil, they are placed at high risk due to newfound discovery of odd lead traces embedded in the ground.

In a mid- to late-2012 study by Brazilian research team SCIELO, medical examiners subjected eighty calves to an isolated "paddock" area, in hopeful effort to verify the ongoing theories of lead-embedded-soil. Over the course of their testing, researchers discovered that of the eighty that only ten came back infected. Nine of the diseased eventually died, while the remaining recovered after being relocated. Upon additional examination, researchers further found that side-effects leading to the casualties of the infected included excessive salivation, muscle tremors, decreased tongue tone, nasal secretion and difficulty breathing; these were among major factors that correlated to damage to the nervous system.

As of yet, further findings are still being conducted to hopefully trace the definite answer as to what is igniting the odd lead levels, and what steps Brazilian officials shall take to resolve the issue.