Jennifer Vasquez

Montefiore Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, North Bronx, NY

This summer I worked at the lead program, which is run by Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. The Lead Poisoning Prevention Program addresses all aspects of childhood lead poisoning from diagnosis and treatment to education and research. Their mission is to treat lead-poisoned children and their families and to educate families at risk, other medical providers and local, state and national legislators and policy makers.

I worked alongside Dr. Morri Markowitz and Dr. John Rosen who are two of the leading researchers on childhood lead poisoning. I helped run a lead clinic where many disadvantaged families go to learn about the effects of lead poisoning and about what can be done to help prevent any more exposure to this toxin. Many of these families are not able to pay for the visit to the hospital and many do not have insurance to cover their child's treatment. However, the lead program does not turn down any families that need to get treated. A lot of the families that went to the lead clinic did not speak any English and I helped translate for the families and the doctors. I also worked alongside an environmental coordinator, Mary Martinez, whose responsibilities were to test lead dust in houses and report housing violations to the Department of Health in New York. I helped teach these families the dangers of lead, where lead is usually found and how to prevent an intoxicated child from continuing to be exposed.

Originally it was my understanding that I was going to work alongside environmental coordinators planning a new program that was supposed to take place this summer educating parents and their children about lead and teaching them how to test for lead in their homes. Unfortunately, the grant for this program did not go through so we were not able to visit with the families in Brooklyn to educate parents on how they can test for lead in the home. However, the program should be up and running this fall.

Although I did not do what I originally planned, I was still able to interact with parents and children and teach them the hazards of lead and how to prevent it. I was not able to show parents how to test for lead dust in the home, but I did learn how to do it myself. I also helped in the lead clinic, which ran weekly, and I was able to see all the work that is done for each family that is exposed to lead in the Bronx and Westchester.

My internship was a great learning experience. I knew that lead poisoning was still a problem, but I did not know that there were still thousands of children being intoxicated. I also went into this internship thinking that I knew a lot on this topic, but I soon began to realize that there is so much to know and learn and while my knowledge of the subject really expanded, I definitely know that there is a lot out there still for me to learn. This internship really helped me realize that I truly want to work with environmental toxins with a special focus on how they affect children.

My internship helped expand my knowledge of lead poisoning, which will greatly help me with my senior integrative project. My honors study involves lead poisoning in zebra fish and I am using these fish as a proposed model for humans. This internship allowed me to see how lead actually affects humans greatly aiding me with my senior integrative project. My internship also gave me a better idea on what the focus of my honors study should be; a lot of the patients that went to the lead clinic were pregnant mothers. I learned that lead stored in a pregnant mother is passed to the fetus. As a result I want to focus on the survivability and the hatchability of the zebra fish eggs after the adult zebra fish are exposed to lead.

My original plan for my honors study was to test the hypothesis that magnesium ions added to zebra fish tanks reverse and prevent lead poisoning in zebra fish, which is proposed as a model for both lead poisoning and magnesium actions in humans. However, after my internship experience I am planning to add another variable to my study. Many studies show that calcium is a competitive inhibitor of lead: whenever a family went to the lead clinic one of the main points that we wanted to get across to them was that the child needed to consume plenty of calcium in order to help eliminate lead from his/her body. Because calcium has been studied extensively, it is the element that is currently used in order to compete with lead. However it is not efficient, since using this element may increase the absorption of lead from the gut. While using this calcium for chelation may be lifesaving, a lot of the drugs that use this element generally have a transient effect on blood lead levels. Within days to weeks of completion of treatment the blood lead levels will begin to increase, presumably as it is released from bone.

While the benefits of magnesium in terms of preventing and treating heart disease, controlling high blood pressure, limiting complications of congestive heart failure, preventing diabetes complications, easing muscle cramps, aches and pains etc., have been acknowledged, little is known about the benefits of magnesium in eliminating heavy metal poisoning, in particular lead poisoning, from organisms. I believe that magnesium is a better competitive inhibitor of lead in the body and causes fewer complications in eliminating lead. Therefore, my honors study will compare the effects of calcium and the effects of magnesium on zebra fish and will look at which element is more successful at eliminating lead from the fish. This will change my hypothesis to: magnesium ions added to zebra fish tanks are better at reversing and preventing lead poisoning in zebra fish than calcium ions added to zebra fish tanks.