Organic. Chocolate. The first word says fresh, pure, wholesome; the second says smooth, sweet, delectable. Put these words together and you have the perfect treat. Or might you have a candy bar poisoned by lead?
"Will you test grown-ups, too?" asked an athletically-built young man at a recent blood lead testing event in NE Portland. The Josiah Hill III Clinic, a mobile clinic that provides free blood lead testing throughout the Portland area, is most concerned about lead's lasting damages to young children. But this young man had a reason for concern — the organic chocolate bars he'd been enjoying daily for the past several months had just been recalled for excessive and dangerous levels of lead.
Lead is probably the last ingredient most people would expect to find in their chocolate. But in fact, lead is sometimes found in chocolates, vinyl mini-blinds, porcelain bathtubs, pottery, imported tin cans and many other products. Not confined to the paint and plumbing, lead crops up even in candy and children's toys. Early this year, a 4-year-old Minnesotan was poisoned and died from swallowing part of a bracelet. It turned out to be 99 percent lead. The bracelet was one of a batch of 300,000, and it came free with the purchase of Reebok children's shoes.
Although Reebok assures its consumers and the public that it will do everything it can to make sure no child ever suffers a similar fate, parents wonder what the next big recall will be, and how to keep their child safe. Dagoba Chocolate, maker of the recalled chocolate bars, has one part of the answer — a policy for regular testing to catch and pull contaminated items from the shelves. But for U.S. consumers to be fully protected from lead, global standards would have to be raised.
Chaun MacQueen manages a lead education program at the Community Energy Project. "Responsible businesses protect their consumers by testing their products, but even so, some contaminated items can slip through," she says. "We encourage folks to learn more about protecting their families from lead hazards — our free lead poisoning prevention workshops are a good place to start. The workshops help people to do testing in their own homes."
When it comes to chocolate and other candies, it's the burning of leaded gasoline that must stop. After lead in gasoline was banned in the United States, its makers created a new market for their product in developing countries. But leaded gasoline makes its way back home. When leaded gasoline powers machinery that dries candy and spice ingredients, such as cocoa beans, the lead in the gas fumes can contaminate the food.
Dr. Louis Spaner, a longtime volunteer with the Josiah Hill III Clinic, says this is where regular blood-lead testing comes in. "Prevention is key," says Spaner, "You try to keep your child away from items you're not sure of, but you can't always know what she's gotten her hands on." He recommends that children under age 6 be tested at least once — preferably very early, at ages 1 or 2. Children younger than 6 are the most vulnerable to permanent developmental brain damage from lead exposure. A test should also be done anytime there is a change in the environment or the child's behavior that could increase their risk of exposure.
Spaner cautions against assuming that a child without symptoms has not been exposed. "That's what makes lead poisoning so dangerous — a child can be exposed for months and even years without showing obvious signs," he says, "but the long-term effects are measurable in terms of lowered IQs and behavioral disabilities. A blood-lead test catches the problem when primary prevention has failed and alerts the family that it's time to look for and get rid of the source of exposure for their child."