I was reading an article about lead poisoning in children and it has me wondering how lead exposure damages your brain. From a quick search it seems like it can cause obsessive compulsive tendencies, and sensory problems. Do we have an answer as to why this happens?
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Lead, like all heavy metals, is toxic because our bodies can’t tell the difference between lead and other metals that are essential for our body chemistry like calcium, zinc, and iron. So if we get lead into our bodies, our cells will accidentally put that lead where those other metals are supposed to be. So now you have proteins and lipids and enzymes that don’t work correctly or don’t work at all because they’re built wrong.
This is obviously bad for adults too, but it’s especially bad for kids because adults have finished forming their brains, but children’s brains are still forming, and having cells and enzymes and other things that aren’t working right means that the critical pathways in their brains don’t form right, and this can lead to lifelong neurological deficits.
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