The Case of Deborah Rice: Who Is the Environmental Protection Agency Protecting?

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Abstract

Why did the EPA dismiss a highly respected neurotoxicologist as chair of its external review panel on the fire retardant deca? Pioneering lead researcher Herbert Needleman, MD, argues that the answer has little to do with science.

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Deficits in Psychologic and Classroom Performance of Children with Elevated Dentine Lead Levels

Herbert Needleman, Charles Gunnoe, Alan Leviton … (1979)

To measure the neuropsychologic effects of unidentified childhood exposure to lead, the performance of 58 children with high and 100 with low dentine lead levels was compared. Children with lead levels scored significantly less well on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Revised) than those with low lead levels. This difference was also apparent on verbal subtests, on three other measures of auditory or speech processing and on a measure of attention. Analysis of variance showed that none of these differences could be explained by any of the 39 other variables studied. Also evaluated by a teachers' questionnaire was the classroom behavior of all children (2146 in number) whose teeth were analyzed. The frequency of non-adaptive classroom behavior increased in a dose-related fashion to dentine lead level. Lead exposure, at doses below those producing symptoms severe enough to be diagnosed clinically, appears to be associated with neuropsychologic deficits that may interfere with classroom performance.

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The long-term effects of exposure to low doses of lead in childhood. An 11-year follow-up report.

H L Needleman, A. Schell, D. Bellinger … (1990)

To determine whether the effects of low-level lead exposure persist, we reexamined 132 of 270 young adults who had initially been studied as primary school-children in 1975 through 1978. In the earlier study, neurobehavioral functioning was found to be inversely related to dentin lead levels. As compared with those we restudied, the other 138 subjects had had somewhat higher lead levels on earlier analysis, as well as significantly lower IQ scores and poorer teachers' ratings of classroom behavior. When the 132 subjects were reexamined in 1988, impairment in neurobehavioral function was still found to be related to the lead content of teeth shed at the ages of six and seven. The young people with dentin lead levels greater than 20 ppm had a markedly higher risk of dropping out of high school (adjusted odds ratio, 7.4; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.4 to 40.7) and of having a reading disability (odds ratio, 5.8; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.7 to 19.7) as compared with those with dentin lead levels less than 10 ppm. Higher lead levels in childhood were also significantly associated with lower class standing in high school, increased absenteeism, lower vocabulary and grammatical-reasoning scores, poorer hand-eye coordination, longer reaction times, and slower finger tapping. No significant associations were found with the results of 10 other tests of neurobehavioral functioning. Lead levels were inversely related to self-reports of minor delinquent activity. We conclude that exposure to lead in childhood is associated with deficits in central nervous system functioning that persist into young adulthood.

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Lead levels in deciduous teeth of urban and suburban American children.

HERBERT NEEDLEMAN, ORHAN C. TUNCAY, IRVING SHAPIRO (1972)

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS Biol

Journal ID (publisher-id): pbio

Journal ID (publisher-id): plbi

Journal ID (pmc): plosbiol

Title: PLoS Biology

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )

ISSN (Print): 1544-9173

ISSN (Electronic): 1545-7885

Publication date (Print): May 2008

Publication date (Electronic): 13 May 2008

Volume: 6

Issue: 5

Electronic Location Identifier: e129

Article

Publisher ID: 08-PLBI-PS-1056R1

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060129

PMC ID: 2430913

PubMed ID: 18479187

SO-VID: c910a27e-a5ce-4a10-9182-e04fae04f591

Copyright © Copyright: © 2008 Herbert L. Needleman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Pages: 3

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citation Needleman HL (2008) The case of Deborah Rice: Who is the Environmental Protection Agency protecting? PLoS Biol 6(5): e129. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060129

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Life sciences

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