• Question: can u die from lead poisoning?

    Asked by albob11 to Ailsa, Evan, James, Ryan on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Evan Keane

      Evan Keane answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      You certainly can. Getting increased levels of lead in your body is BAD – it can damage basically every single organ you have! And yes it can kill you. So I wouldn’t hang out with or near anything lead. Oh and by the way the “lead” in your pencil isn’t actually lead, it is graphite which is just carbon. They call it lead because it actually did used to be lead in pencils. Well supposedly anyway, but I guess they figured out very quickly that that was a bad idea when the pencil chewers started dying!!!

    • Photo: Ailsa Powell

      Ailsa Powell answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Yes you can. Even if you don’t die from it, it will make you pretty sick because Evan has mentioned it will affect every organ you have and also your bones. Also it won’t kill you immediately, it will build up in your body over time making you sicker and sicker.

      Weirdly water pipes in houses used to be made of lead because it doesn’t corrode. Because the effects of the poisoning can be so slow no one knew how dangerous it was. We don’t use lead pipes in houses anymore, but some old houses still have them.

      Because of it’s white colouring of some lead compounds it was used for makeup in the Elizabethan era and 17th century (it was fashionable to have very pale skin). The think makeup was used to cover small pox scars too, but was actually do more harm!

      More recently lead based paint was used to paint walls (again because of the white pigment), if you live in the USA in an oldish house, the paint on the walls may well contain lead!

      People over history have also suffered from arsenic poisoning for the same reasons – no one knew it was harmful and so arsenic based makeup and paint have been used.

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