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

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

"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!

"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
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