The CDC has been measuring blood lead in a representative slice of the United States since 1976. Ten rounds, ninety-nine thousand records, every age group represented. The data has been public the whole time.
Nobody had ever stacked the rounds end-to-end on the same age axis. So we did.
Lead from 1965 is still showing up in elderly samples now. It never really left.
The shape never changed
Toddlers always have the highest blood lead. Adults plateau. The elderly tick back up as bones break down. That arc is the same in 1976, in 1990, and today.
What changed is the absolute dose. Peak-era toddlers had blood lead nearly twenty times higher than today's toddlers. Same shape. Ten times the height.
The bottom rows are the part that hits
Find your age along one of those rows. If you were measured at 20 in NHANES II, you are 68 now. The peak-era toddlers from that red curve are now in their 60s. Their bones are now slowly releasing the lead they took in fifty years ago.
Why it matters
The two horizontal reference lines on the chart are at 3.5 µg/dL (the current CDC reference level for child blood lead) and at 10 µg/dL (the former CDC action level). Most of the red curve sits above both.
Peak-era America was, by today's standards, a population in chronic lead poisoning, and the survey captured it cleanly.
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