Charm Death

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Paint that contains lead is the most common place for lead exposure for little kids under 6 years old. Although, one report said that 34% of kids aged 0-6 with lead poisoning in Los Angeles County, have been poisoned because items containing lead were brought to their home. Some of these items could be candy, folk and traditional medications, ceramic plates or silverware, and metal toys, jewelry, or key chains. In 2004, a kid in Oregon had a lead-containing necklace and had a BLL of 123 ug/dL. In the same year, the CPSA found 150 million lead-containing, metallic, toy jewelry sold in toy vending machines. Since the decline of high BLL's in little kids has happened, lots of educations of items containing lead have grown.

In Mid-February of 2006, a little boy about 4 years old swallowed a small heart-shaped Reebok charm that contained lead. This charm was a free gift with any purchase of Reebok shoes. When this little boy from Minnesota swallowed this charm he was sent to the hospital into the emergency department with a complaint of barfing. He was told, by his parents to drink lots of fluids and was sent back home. In 2 days, this same boy was sent back to the hospital with unstoppable barfing, he could barely talk, he had a stomachache, and he had lack of interest, spirit, and energy. He was also dehydrated and his blood urea nitrogen levels were highly elevated. He also had a major vein fluid replacement.

After a day (not a full day but 10 hours) the little boy became agitated and combative. On his way to the radiology department, this kid suffered a respitory arrest with a seizure-type activity. After that he got a CT (computer tomography) scan of his head, his chest, and his abdomen. During the scan, a heart-shaped, metallic charm was found and many tests for heavy metals happened.

After another day, a BLL of 180 ug/dL was found; brain blood flow studies showed that there was no blood going to the brain and the boy had

clinical brain death information. On the fourth day, this little, little boy was taken out of the life support area and had died. After the boy was dead, the surgeons removed the charm and his mom recognized it as a charm from a pair of Reebok shoes that this little boy's friend owned. His mom did not know the boy had swallowed the charm since he had no report of swallowing non-edible items.

The next day, a Minneapolis Department of Regulatory Service detective did a search of lead based items in his house. He did not find any lead-containing items and only one barely elevated lead-dust level.