Lead Poisoning?

Anyone who has studied IQ results for various peoples on the planet knows that Africans score quite low relative to other groups of people. Africans who are in urban areas tend to score higher than those in rural areas. Last night I came across an article in the NYT that was discussing the growing population of African immigrants in the Bronx and I saw the following:

Last year, a baby boy from Kenya came to the emergency room with lead poisoning. After a month of treatment, he did not get better, Lynette Alvarado, the director of language culture for the hospital, said.

She contacted the Sauti Yetu Center for African Women and Families, and found out the source of the problem had come from Africa. The kitchen utensils brought to the United States by the boy’s parents were decorated with lead paint.

Aside from the obvious question, why is lead paint being used on utensils? The next thing we have to ask is how widespread is this practice? Lead exposure definitely leads to brain development problems.

If this practice of lead painted utensils is widespread we have to ask how this may impact IQ among Africans. The other thing would be to ask what ELSE is either painted with lead or contains lead in other forms. How much of the litter we see in many photo and videos of African towns has is contaminated with lead that is being breathed in by residents?