(Ed: Including this story as it is unique in showing the risk of lead poisoning in a real-life step-by-step very sad story and it will hopefully encourage the many people who lived in older homes to take extra care when it comes to lead paint. )
CLEVELAND, Ohio– It only took seven months living in a West Side duplex for Haneen Alwaeli, one of the youngest members of Cleveland’s refugee population, to be hospitalized for lead poisoning.
The little girl, less than 2 years old at the time, spent 10 days in the pediatric acute care unit at MetroHealth Medical Center in the summer of 2014, enduring painful injections and IV treatments in an attempt to extract the dangerous heavy metal from her blood.