Lead Poisoning Essay

Lead Toxicity Has No Felicity For centuries, Lead (Pb) has been used in various industries—most notoriously, the paint industry—and although lead-based paint has been significantly reduced in developed regions, it still infiltrates many American homes concentrated in low-income areas. Studies have shown that lead is able to mimic certain metals that are significant in biological processes, leading to a collection of developmental and physiological conditions commonly grouped as “lead poisoning.” In brief, lead acts on small biological systems that affect a major system, an example of which are zinc-finger proteins. The zinc-finger, a common protein motif, relies on the coordination of Zinc (Zn) ions for the protein’s shape and stability; therefore, any alterations can affect its shape and, inherently, its function. In an article by Jacqueline Michelle Ordemann and Rachel Narehood Austin, specific cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia seem to be associated with substitution
Through various experiments correlating the symptoms of several cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia to lead-bonded zinc-finger proteins, they had logically proposed an epigenetic reason for these typically genetically-based diseases. Lead poisoning had already been associated with various developmental disorders, but, most importantly, Ordemann’s review highlights lead’s effects on conditions that develop later in life. Lead poisoning should be a relatively avoidable problem because of modern developments, yet numerous American regions still facilitate the usage of lead and lead toxicity is still a worldwide epidemiological problem, therefore generating doubt on the efficacy of industrial lead