When my nephew Harrison was a year old, as is required by law in New York State, he was tested for lead and had a lead count of14 (the CDC’s threshold level for lead is 10 micrograms per deciliter). When they learned about Harrison’s lead level, my brother tried to figure out the source of the lead with a testing kit. Unable to determine where it was coming from, the suspicion was that old layers of lead paint were being abraded when windows were opened and closed. If this were so, Harrison was either breathing in minuscule amounts of lead or, as he crawled through the apartment, he may have gotten tiny amounts of lead on his hands that he then may have put into his mouth.

Even so, my dear, dear nephew has turned out to be quite brilliant, not only a top student but an avid reader and an absolutely extraordinary writer. Last year his teacher told me, “He is truly one of my best students-a very, very bright child. I would’ve never guessed he was exposed to lead at any capacity.”

Seven years later, when my youngest son, George, had an elevated lead count I initially felt sick to my stomach and depressed, and then I thought about my nephew. My sister-in-law, Jen, is a thoughtful and ingenious mother, forever filling her boys’ lives with truly fun and creative activities-Harrison makes movies, writes books, and even paints pictures that hang on the wall in my parent’s home. I suspected that Harrison’s extremely enriched childhood actually protected his brain from the detrimental effects of lead. After sharing my suspicion with Dr. Theodore Lidsky, a neuropsychologist and a toxicologist with the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilties, he told me about a study published in the journal Brain Research in March 2001.

Study — A stimulating environment can minimize the damaging effects of lead
To determine whether or not lead-exposed rat pups in enriched environments suffer fewer deficits than lead-exposed rat pups in settings that offer little stimulation, Drs. Jay Schneider and Theodore Lidsky split a population of rats into two groups. One group was housed alone in an isolated environment and the other was kept in groups of eight in stimulating habitats where they could learn and play. Half of the rats in the enriched environment were given lead in their drinking water while the other half were not. The same was done for the rats in isolated environments. What they found was that the lead-exposed rats in the impoverished setting showed dramatic learning deficits. However, in the enriched environment, the lead-exposed rats performed similarly to their unexposed counterparts.