Exposure to lead in the environment can harm anyone’s health. However, it is especially harmful to children under age six, because their bodies are still growing. The Missouri Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Program provides data on lead levels in adults and children in Missouri.
What is Lead Poisoning?
Lead poisoning happens when an adult or child swallows or breathes in lead. Lead is especially harmful to children. Even at low levels, lead can affect a child's growth, behavior, and development, including their ability to pay attention, learn, and achieve in school. There is no safe level of lead, and lead poisoning can have many health effects. Health effects can be long lasting.
The most common way children are exposed to lead is from lead paint in homes built before 1980. Lead paint was used the most in homes built before 1950.
Children can also be exposed to lead in soil from old paint wearing away, and from pipes with lead in them in older homes.
In some areas in Missouri, children live near old lead mines, which can also be a source of exposure. Leftover mining waste has moved off mining sites and has been used as fill in yards, driveways, and playgrounds where children play.
Monitoring blood lead levels allows parents, healthcare providers, public health officials, and communities to take action to reduce lead exposures. To learn more about childhood lead poisoning prevention, visit Missouri’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.
View childhood lead exposure risks by county and zip code.
Blood Lead Data
Missouri EPHT - Blood Lead Query
Search this query to find:
Annual number of blood lead tests
Annual number of blood lead elevations
Annual percent of population tested
Annual percent of tested population with elevated blood lead
Number of children born in the same year and tested for lead
Number of children born in the same year with elevated blood lead
Percent of children born in the same year with elevated blood lead
Other Data Sources
Other data sources share additional data related to blood lead poisoning, like age of housing data.
Blood lead data can help you:
- See if some communities or populations are at higher risk of blood lead poisoning
- See if blood lead poisoning is going up or down over time
- Direct testing efforts or resources for reducing risk
- Find and fix sources of lead exposure
- See progress towards lowering blood lead levels
The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program
Missouri Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) is a program within the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. EPHT is part of a network of people and information systems which delivers a core set of health, exposure, and hazards data, information summaries and tools to enable analysis, visualization and reporting of insights drawn from data. Those insights are intended to help data drive actions and improve community health.