Alaina's Story

Discovery

 For more than three years Melissa, from Southeastern Ohio, has been a strong advocated for lead poisoned families. As the director of a support group for parents of poisoned children, she takes every opportunity to talk about the need of public information about this hazard that has changed her life as well. In March 1995, her then three-year-old daughter was discovered to have a very high level of lead in her blood.  The finding was totally unexpected.  “She entered pre-school where they ran a routine lead test.  The level came back 47.2 ug/dl”, Melissa remembers. 

 ** Anything above 10 ug/dl is considered an unhealthy level of lead in the blood. **

 Their little girl was already showing signs of being poisoned: loss of appetite, hyperactivity, headaches, stomachaches, irritability, and loss of sleep.  At that time she and her husband were leasing a housed that had been scraped and painted in 1994.  However, it seems that the clean up process was not properly done and Melissa thinks her daughter must have ingested lead based paint chips and inhaled dust.  Fortunately, the couple’s 4-year old son was not poisoned.  

 Melissa and her husband received support from the local health department and other agencies, but she realized there was not enough information about this hazard.  She decided to go public with her story.  That is how she began talking about lead poisoned and got involved in the support group.

 Having to rely on someone else to fix up your housing in order to be safe, loss of work in order to provide necessary care and learning disabilities and school frustrations have all taken an emotional toll on the family.

Impact

 She says it has been a long, hard struggle.  She remembers feeling very lonely, especially at the beginning when, “it seemed that no one knew what I was talking about”.  Her daughter’s sickness was a turning point in their lives. They had to fix the house and Melissa left her job to take care of her daughter.  Most of all, they had to assume that some of the effects of the poisoning were going to prevail forever.  Her daughter has been frustrated at school with learning disabilities.  At the age of six, she is still lead poisoned (25 ug/dl) and suffers from joint pain, poor appetite, lack of sleep, low iron levels and hyperactivity.  She has to take Ritalin to make it through,” Melissa says.  She fears that her daughter will never get better. 

Future

 But, if something good has come out of this experience it is Melissa’s commitment to this cause.  “I hope in the future that lead will no longer be known as the silent hazard,” she says.  She is convinced of the importance of community leaders’ involvement to reach this ambitious goal.  “This issue needs to be widespread; the more advertisement we do, the more children will be saved.”