Physician Exec - Chair Ob/Gyn & Med Direc Women’s Health Service Line, UMass Memorial Health/UMass Chan Med School; Professor of Ob/Gyn, Peds, Psych and Population & Quantitative Health Sciences, UMass Chan Med School
An important call to action from my colleague, Katie Johnson, MD and coauthors, who detail 5 reasons to consider a universal testing approach regarding Blood Lead Levels (BLL’s) for pregnant individuals. Published in the American Academy of Pediatrics journal Pediatrics, October, 2024: “Childhood lead screening and testing are critical for identifying children exposed to lead and addressing exposure for the future, but in utero exposure remains unaddressed by such efforts. Prenatal exposure may be independently neurotoxic to the developing fetus and can contribute to the overall body burden in childhood because of placental transfer, which occurs unencumbered because of lack of a barrier to placental–fetal lead transport.” Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/g-s-zKJr