Preventing "Take-Home" Lead Poisoning
Some kinds of work make lead dust or fumes. You cannot see lead dust, but it can get on your hands, face, and clothes. You take lead dust from your job to your family when you wear your work clothes and shoes home. Lead dust can get in your car. It can get on furniture, floors, and carpets.
Young children, who often put their hands in their mouths, can swallow this lead dust and be poisoned. Lead is especially dangerous to children under the age of 6 and to pregnant and nursing women. Lead can damage a child's central nervous system and can cause attention and behavior problems, as well as decreases in IQ, reading and learning abilities. This damage can have a lifelong effect on school and work performance. Most children with lead poisoning do not look or act sick. Other household members can also swallow or breathe lead dust without realizing it. Adults who are lead poisoned may feel tired, irritable, or get aches and pains. They also can have serious health problems without knowing it. In adults, lead can harm reproductive, kidney, brain, and blood-forming functions. The only way to know if someone is being lead poisoned is to ask a doctor to do a blood test for lead.
In California, lead is disturbed and thereby becomes a risk in over 100 different industries. You may work with lead if you make or fix batteries; melt, cast or grind lead, brass or bronze; make or fix radiators; make or paint ceramics; remove old paint; tear down or remodel houses, buildings, tanks or bridges; solder; work with scrap metal; or work at a shooting range. You are exposed to lead when you scrape, blast, sand, burn, weld, or cut on surfaces where there is lead paint. Your employer should test these surfaces before you work on them to see if they contain lead. There are many other jobs where lead can be dangerous. Ask your employer if you work with lead. The law says your employer must tell you about anything at work which is dangerous. This includes lead.
You can protect yourself and your family from "take-home" lead by taking some primary precautions which include:
- Changing into clean clothes and shoes at work before you get into your car or go home. Put dirty work clothes and shoes in a plastic bag.
- Wash work clothes separately from all other clothes. Empty your work clothes from the plastic bag directly into the washing machine and wash them. Run the empty washing machine again to rinse out the lead. (It is even better if your employer washes the work clothes without them leaving the premises.)
- Wash your hands and face at the end of a work shift and before leaving work. The law says an employer must provide a place for employees to wash their hands.
- Take a shower and wash your hair before leaving work or as soon as you get home. In high exposure lead jobs, the employer must provide work clothes and a shower.
The Occupational Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (OLPPP) in the California Department of Health Services has developed a new bilingual (English and Spanish) poster which alerts employers and workers who work around lead to the dangers of taking lead home to children and other family members. The new poster was developed to illustrate how "take-home" lead exposure occurs and to summarize the basic steps to take to protect families from this danger. It was designed to be displayed at work sites and in health care clinics.
The poster also states that employers in lead-related workplaces must have a lead safety program as required by Cal/OSHA. In addition to the poster, OLPPP distributes fact sheets on preventing "take-home" lead exposures and other materials which educate employers and workers about preventing work-related lead poisoning.
To request copies of the "take-home" lead prevention poster, fact sheets or to obtain an order sheet for additional educational materials, call the Occupational Lead Poisoning Prevention Program's hotline, (510)540-3448.
"Information or recommendations contained in these articles were obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the date of publication. Information is only advisory and does not presume to be exhaustive or inclusive of all workplace hazards or situations."
The above evaluations and/or recommendations are for general guidance only and should not be relied
upon for legal compliance purposes. They are based solely on the information provided to us and relate
only to those conditions specifically discussed. We do not make any warranty, expressed or implied, that your workplace is safe or healthful or that it complies with all laws, regulations or standards.
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