Emerging scientific studies indicate that exposure to lead in drinking water during childhood can impact mental health later in life, according to a new report by Environmental Health News. Lead is a common drinking water contaminant across the country, with leaching from lead plumbing being the primary cause of exposure. Children living in western Pennsylvania are particularly at risk from exposure to this toxic heavy metal in their drinking water.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), exposure to lead even at low levels is considered unsafe for children, as blood levels of lead in children that are lower than what is officially considered a threshold for lead poisoning can still harm developing brains, causing learning and behavioral problems, as well as mental illness during adulthood.

"We've known for a long time that early life lead exposure causes problems related to learning performance and cognitive deficits in children, but now that many lead-exposed [groups of children] have been followed into adulthood, we're also seeing that later in life they're more likely to have major depression, schizophrenia, and other psychiatric disorders," Tomás R. Guilarte, professor, researcher, and director of the Brain Behavior & the Environment program at the Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work at Florida International University, told Environmental Health News. "There's no question that even at low levels of exposure there are associations with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders," he added.

Professor Guilarte, who has been studying the impacts of lead exposure on children since the 1980s, was recently a co-author of a desktop review study published in the scientific journal Current Opinion in Toxicology, which found increasing evidence that early-life exposure to lead posed a risk for psychiatric problems such as depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders, as well as neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, Tourette syndrome, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

One of the studies that was reviewed, which assessed more than 1.5 million people across the United States and Europe, found that people who were exposed to high levels of lead during childhood were more prone to personality disorders such as being more neurotic, less agreeable and less conscientious — factors which also negatively impact mental health. But what causes this and how did the researchers make the link?

"Lead exposure impacts a protein receptor in the brain known as the NMDA receptor, which is critically important for brain development, learning, and cognitive function," said Guilarte, adding that improper functioning of the NMDA receptor is also seen in the brains of people suffering from certain mental conditions, such as schizophrenia for example. The NMDA receptor is responsible for the healthy development of inhibitory neurons that help keep the brain balanced. When it's damaged by lead exposure, it creates too few of those neurons.

"In a healthy brain you have excitatory and inhibitory neurons operating in exquisite balance," Guilarte explained, "but if that's interrupted and you have too many of one or the other, the brain goes haywire."

Until recently, scientists focused primarily on the how lead exposure impacted the brains of children, and the health effects of these changes during childhood. However, researchers have since found that some of symptoms associated with the damage caused by lead only show up in adulthood or even later in life.

This is very concerning as it means children exposed to lead in drinking water will not only be negatively affected by having learning difficulties and problems concentrating during childhood, but may develop serious mental health illness as they get older, sometimes much later in life. The impacts of lead exposure can have dire consequences such as severely affecting both work and career opportunities, as well as a person's mental wellbeing in adulthood.

How do you remove lead from drinking water?

Since lead is a toxic heavy metal, boiling water that is contaminated with lead with not remove or reduce the lead. In fact, the lead will become even more concentrated as the water boils away and is converted to steam. So how can you protect yourself and your kids from exposure to lead in drinking water?

If you are concerned about exposure to lead in drinking water, your best line of defense would be to invest in a good quality home water filter that is capable of efficiently removing lead. The Berkey range of water filters fitted with Black Berkey purification elements have been lab certified to remove more than 99.9% of lead present in water and will do a great job of protecting your family from the ill effects associated with exposure to lead in drinking water.