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exposure to lead from Christmas lights?
We hung Christmas lights today, and after we got done I happened to read the
box they came in. Apparently the coating on the wire contains lead, and I was surprised this was legal. It said to make sure you wash your hands after handling. This really bothered me. What kind of risks do we take without knowing it? I wonder if the lead content was just with this brand, or if all Christmas lights that I've ever handled contained lead. And just how big is the risk? Minute quantities, or expect retarded children? I'm just surprised that they would even put something like this out there on the shelves... Betsy |
#2
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exposure to lead from Christmas lights?
I think lead is only a problem if it gets inside you via your stomach, so a
big thing was lead water pipes, which in the UK were in the vast majority of houses for ages, however the problem is small, there is an effect if you have lived all your life in a house where all the pipes are lead. It's also a build up thing, rather than quantity at any given time, so the threshold for damage is going to be smaller for children (and foetuses), but also bigger than one dose of it on your hands. Because it's getting it into your body via mouth that's why it says wash your hands. But we don't live in a lead free world, it's in cars, and other construction things, we usually wash our hands before eating for bacteria, but it's also to wash of the detritus of a day and make sure we don't eat all that stuff that is on our hands but shouldn't be in our mouths. btw, I spent most of my childhood living in a house with some lead pipes (we had several replaced, but it was impossible to replace some due to the location of them) and I seem to be fine! Anne |
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exposure to lead from Christmas lights?
"Anne Rogers" wrote in message ... I think lead is only a problem if it gets inside you via your stomach, so a big thing was lead water pipes, which in the UK were in the vast majority of houses for ages, however the problem is small, there is an effect if you have lived all your life in a house where all the pipes are lead. It's also a build up thing, rather than quantity at any given time, so the threshold for damage is going to be smaller for children (and foetuses), but also bigger than one dose of it on your hands. Because it's getting it into your body via mouth that's why it says wash your hands. But we don't live in a lead free world, it's in cars, and other construction things, we usually wash our hands before eating for bacteria, but it's also to wash of the detritus of a day and make sure we don't eat all that stuff that is on our hands but shouldn't be in our mouths. btw, I spent most of my childhood living in a house with some lead pipes (we had several replaced, but it was impossible to replace some due to the location of them) and I seem to be fine! Anne Well, that's a relief. I don't know a whole lot about lead, except when we were house hunting it was a big deal if the house had lead based paint. But I just didn't know enough about lead exposure to know if it was a big deal with the xmas lights or not! |
#4
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exposure to lead from Christmas lights?
"oregonchick" wrote in message
... We hung Christmas lights today, and after we got done I happened to read the box they came in. Apparently the coating on the wire contains lead, and I was surprised this was legal. It said to make sure you wash your hands after handling. This really bothered me. What kind of risks do we take without knowing it? I wonder if the lead content was just with this brand, or if all Christmas lights that I've ever handled contained lead. And just how big is the risk? Minute quantities, or expect retarded children? I'm just surprised that they would even put something like this out there on the shelves... I haven't heard that one before, but perhaps it explains a lot about the folk who keep their Christmas lights up all year round. -- Amy Mum to Carlos born sleeping 20/11/02, & Ana born screaming 30/06/04 http://www.freewebs.com/carlos2002/ http://www.babiesonline.com/babies/a/ana%5Fj%5F2004/ My blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/querer-hijo-querer-hija/ |
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