Lead poisoning in children

Last month my girlfriend and I took our two year old son in for his annual vaccines. While there the nurse had us fill out a lead screening form. The form consists of a series of questions,for example is your home built before 1975? Do you have chipping paint in your home? Does your home have plumbing containing lead?If your answer is yes your child is at a higher risk of lead poisoning. They also suggests a simple blood test if your answers are yes. In our case all the answers are yes,so we had the blood test. Our son's blood test came back too high. The next step was to have our home testes by a "lead risk assesor" this is a trained professional who specializes in lead testing in homes. Unfortunatley these companies want a minnimum of 1,000.000. In our world a thousand dollars might as well be a million. I mean think about it the testing would only tell you your risks that doesn't even begin to FIX the problems. So instead of having a risk assesor come on we decided to research lead poisonong and it's sources. From this research we learned that lead can get into the body by ingestion, breathing lead dust in through your lungs,and by direct contact with the skin. Which means it could be the paint in our house, it could be our soil outside, or it could be the plumbing in our house. So we started by buying a lead paint test kit off the internet and sening th esample off to a lab. Then we called a plumber to inspect our pipes and take a water sample. In the mean time i started to call goverment agencies to find any and all information on any assistance they might offer families that cannot afford the cost of lead removal who have small children at home. I called the monroe county health department, the illinois department of health, the EPA, and a parents cohalition for children suffering from lad poisoning. They all said the same thing no one could help until a child was showing clinical signs of lead poisonong or their blood lead level was a ten or above. Our son's is a five. Some of the effects of lead poisoning include growth abnormalities,speech problems, behavioral problems, seizures, and ireversible permanent brain damage. Yet there is no one out there to help before those things begin to occur. The bottom live is there is not enough money. I feel like in our wourld today it almost always come back to money. you either have it or your out of luck.