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Lead contamination of public drinking water and academic achievements among children in Massachusetts: a panel study
BACKGROUND: Public drinking water can be an important source exposure to lead, which can affect children’s cognitive development and academic performance. Few studies have looked at the impact of lead exposures from community water supplies or their impact on school achievements. We examined the ass...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8761345/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35033038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12474-1 |
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author | Lu, Wenxin Levin, Ronnie Schwartz, Joel |
author_facet | Lu, Wenxin Levin, Ronnie Schwartz, Joel |
author_sort | Lu, Wenxin |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Public drinking water can be an important source exposure to lead, which can affect children’s cognitive development and academic performance. Few studies have looked at the impact of lead exposures from community water supplies or their impact on school achievements. We examined the association between annual community water lead levels (WLLs) and children’s academic performances at the school district level. METHODS: We matched the 90th percentile WLLs with the grade 3–8 standardized test scores from the Stanford Education Data Archive on Geographic School Districts by geographic location and year. We used multivariate linear regression and adjusted for urbanicity, race, socioeconomic characteristics, school district, grade, and year. We also explored potential effect measure modifications and lag effects. RESULTS: After adjusting for potential confounders, a 5 μg/L increase in 90th percentile WLLs in a GSD was associated with a 0.00684 [0.00021, 0.01348] standard deviation decrease in the average math test score in the same year. No association was found for English Language Arts. CONCLUSIONS: We found an association between the annual fluctuation of WLLs and math test scores in Massachusetts school districts, after adjusting for confounding by urbanicity, race, socioeconomic factors, school district, grade, and year. The implications of a detectable effect of WLLs on academic performance even at the modest levels evident in MA are significant and timely. Persistent efforts should be made to further reduce lead in drinking water. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-12474-1. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8761345 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87613452022-01-18 Lead contamination of public drinking water and academic achievements among children in Massachusetts: a panel study Lu, Wenxin Levin, Ronnie Schwartz, Joel BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Public drinking water can be an important source exposure to lead, which can affect children’s cognitive development and academic performance. Few studies have looked at the impact of lead exposures from community water supplies or their impact on school achievements. We examined the association between annual community water lead levels (WLLs) and children’s academic performances at the school district level. METHODS: We matched the 90th percentile WLLs with the grade 3–8 standardized test scores from the Stanford Education Data Archive on Geographic School Districts by geographic location and year. We used multivariate linear regression and adjusted for urbanicity, race, socioeconomic characteristics, school district, grade, and year. We also explored potential effect measure modifications and lag effects. RESULTS: After adjusting for potential confounders, a 5 μg/L increase in 90th percentile WLLs in a GSD was associated with a 0.00684 [0.00021, 0.01348] standard deviation decrease in the average math test score in the same year. No association was found for English Language Arts. CONCLUSIONS: We found an association between the annual fluctuation of WLLs and math test scores in Massachusetts school districts, after adjusting for confounding by urbanicity, race, socioeconomic factors, school district, grade, and year. The implications of a detectable effect of WLLs on academic performance even at the modest levels evident in MA are significant and timely. Persistent efforts should be made to further reduce lead in drinking water. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-12474-1. BioMed Central 2022-01-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8761345/ /pubmed/35033038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12474-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Lu, Wenxin Levin, Ronnie Schwartz, Joel Lead contamination of public drinking water and academic achievements among children in Massachusetts: a panel study |
title | Lead contamination of public drinking water and academic achievements among children in Massachusetts: a panel study |
title_full | Lead contamination of public drinking water and academic achievements among children in Massachusetts: a panel study |
title_fullStr | Lead contamination of public drinking water and academic achievements among children in Massachusetts: a panel study |
title_full_unstemmed | Lead contamination of public drinking water and academic achievements among children in Massachusetts: a panel study |
title_short | Lead contamination of public drinking water and academic achievements among children in Massachusetts: a panel study |
title_sort | lead contamination of public drinking water and academic achievements among children in massachusetts: a panel study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8761345/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35033038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12474-1 |
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