our friends' daughter ella has lead poisoning. the severity of her case is still a bit of a mystery to me, although from what i have read so far, her blood lead level (BLL), while alarmingly high, is not high enough to warrant invasive and somewhat dangerous chelation therapy unless she is exposed for a long period of time or her BLL goes up to 45µg/dL (hers is at 24.3 µg/dL right now, a week after the fire). still--i am so worried about her and her parents!!! and even more than that, i am angry for them.
their landlord hired painters to remove lead paint from the outside of their house. the painters put up plastic on the insides and outsides of the windows to protect the interior from dust. so far so good, right? the big cock-up was when they decided to remove the paint from the exterior with a BLOWTORCH (illegal, by the way--i wonder why?), and set the fucking house on fire! then the fire department continued the spiral of moronic behavior by chopping a hole from the exterior of the house through to the interior (into the baby's room), ripping the protective plastic off the windows in the process, and filling the apartment with smoke and lead-based paint dust. so yeah. shitty scary situation.
please think good thoughts for our friends and their baby daughter, as they try to get the lead out of her blood.
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