Lead Poisoning Essay

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Lead is considered to be a toxic heavy metal. It occurs naturally in the Earth’s crust. However, it tends to combine with other elements to form lead compounds. (Registry, 2011). Moreover, it has no known function in the body and with excess accumulation, either acute or chronic, will cause a wide array of metabolic dysfunctions by interfering with normal metabolic functions (Analytical Research Laboratories, 2012). From a historical standpoint, most human beings if not all have accumulated some lead in their bodies over the course of their daily lives. In extreme cases, that is, when there is too much lead in the body it is known to cause lead poisoning. In order to fully understand this phenomenon, one must first acknowledge; how lead enters the body, how it is distributed, and how and if it is eliminated. There are many contributing factors that enhance the amount of lead in the environment, for instance, environmental lead occurs from the burning of leaded gasoline, from battery and smelter industries and it’s also found in ink and paper. Additionally, many canned food products are sealed with lead solder (Analytical Research Laboratories, 2012). Due to the vast quantity of lead found in the environment, exposure is inevitable. On the contrary, there are three main ways in which lead can enter the body: inhalation, ingestion or absorption through the skin. It may be inhaled when it is burned or melted, releasing some of the lead as a fume and or when dust that contains lead becomes airborne. In terms of ingestion, lead may be ingested through drinking water, when dust particles containing lead come in contact with food or food preparation surfaces, etc. In particular cases that inv... ... middle of paper ... ...te in the bone, with a half-life of years to decades (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013). Hence, individuals who are exposed to lead for long period of time will have high levels of lead present in there bone as compared to their blood and soft tissues. In continuation, the lead that is not accumulate in the bone if secreted via the urine, approximately 70% of the time. Whereas to a lesser extent elimination also occurs via feces, sweat, hair and nails. (Leggett et al. 1993). Nevertheless, this paper will focus on the comparing two significantly different ingestion rate of lead in the body (blood, soft tissue and bone) from a mathematically standpoint. In other words to proceed with the comparison a variety of time intervals (both short and long time) will be taken into consideration to graphically illustrate the accumulation of lead in the body.

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