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SALT LAKE CITY — A group of health care professionals with a focus on environmental issues is asking state lawmakers to pay for blood lead testing for pregnant mothers and infants.
Spurred by the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment is calling on lawmakers to ensure Utah children are not also being exposed to lead.
Last month, the American Medical Association called for all schools and day care centers to receive regular water quality testing.
Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, said the group is asking state lawmakers to take it a step further.
"Utah should do more than that," Moench said. "And 'more than that,' in our view, would be to offer blood lead testing of prospective parents, pregnant mothers and of newborns so that at that stage of life, we have an idea of what kind of exposure Utah's children might face."
Sam LeFevre, program manager for environmental epidemiology at the Utah Department of Health, said many local health departments offer lead testing for families at low or reduced cost.
The Salt Lake County Health Department, for example, offers blood testing and other services for certain people who qualify.
After the passage of President Barack Obama's health care law, many insurers also include lead testing as part of their preventive care coverage, LeFevre said.
The Utah Department of Health collaborates with clinical labs to collect and report all blood lead testing results. LeFevre said that about 3,000 to 5,000 children are tested per year in Utah, although that number has been on the decline. Last year, the state tested about 1,500 children, he said.
Data from those tests showed that the rate of lead exposure in Utah was about half that of the national average, according to LeFevre.
A report published in the journal Pediatrics last month showed about 2.6 percent of preschool children in the U.S. had a blood lead concentration above the level associated with cognitive defects and behavioral problems.
According to Utah data, the percentage of children under age 5 with elevated lead levels dropped from a high of 4 percent in 1996 to 0.6 percent in 2014, the most recent year available.The state reports data for blood lead levels of 10 micrograms per deciliter or higher.
The Pediatrics report uses a lower threshold of 5 micrograms per deciliter — in line with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations.
Newborns in Utah are currently required to undergo screening for dozens of rare, genetic or metabolic disorders.
Lead testing is not part of the screening program.
Lead can damage a developing baby's nervous system and cause developmental delays, even at low levels, according to the CDC. No safe blood lead level in children has been identified, according to LeFevre.
But without the resources to screen newborns for every potential hazard, he said the choice of what to include becomes "a balancing act."
"Which dog are you going to go after?" LeFevre said. "How much do you gain on trying to reduce the lead exposure even further? And how much can you do for a child that has a small amount of blood lead but not at a clinical level that would result in clinical intervention?"
Moench estimated the cost of lead testing Utah's pregnant mothers and infants to be $2 million to $3 million per year.
He said widespread testing would generate more data on lead exposure in the state.
"We don't think there are two sides to this," Moench said, in contrast to the group's usual work on air quality. "We don't think that it should be any sort of political football. It should just be, 'Hey, our kids deserve protection, so let's spend a little bit of money to find out how much protection they need.'"
The group plans to present their proposal to state lawmakers next week.
