Studies beginning in 1986 have shown that low lead levels can poison a child. Miranda et al. (2007) looked at students in North Carolina. Miranda et al. (2007) focused their study on children in North Carolina “to determine whether blood lead levels in early childhood are related to educational achievement in early elementary school as measured by performance on end-of-grade (EOG) testing” (p. 1242). The authors were looking at scores for mathematics and reading by getting information from the NCERDC (North Carolina Education Research Data Center) from 1995-1996. Early childhood lead exposures appear to have a bigger impact on reading than on mathematics portions of the EOG, although the differences may not be statistically significant, according to Miranda et al., 2007, p.1246. Miranda et al. (2007), states there is a discernible impact of end-of-grade test with children’s blood level tests (BLL) as low as 2ug/dL. When the BLL is 5ug/dL, it appears that the student reading ability declines (p. 1242). A limitation is that Miranda et al. (2007) restricted their study to only English speakers and could not make accurate measures of parental IQ and quality home environment (p. 1247). The author’s decided to conduct further study on the achievement gap related to blacks and higher blood lead …show more content…
(2013) looked at students in the Michigan area, specifically Detroit to study both lead exposure levels and lead poisoning. These authors were able to show that no matter how low a lead exposure number, it can impact end-of-grade (EOG) performance (p. e72). Zhang et al. (2013) compared elementary and junior high students to see how it affected their mathematics, science, and reading academic achievements (p. e72). Zhang et al. (2013) found a significant association between early childhood lead exposure and academic achievement in the Detroit Public Schools. They found that the higher a student’s BLL in early childhood the student performed worst on school test and levels below 5ug/dL showed an adverse academic achievement (p. e76). A few strengths are Zhang et al. (2013) and Miranda et al. (2007) were able to build on other studies (p. e72). Zhang et al. (2013) was the first to “investigate the long-term effect of early childhood lead exposure on academic in the classroom, specifically mathematics, science, and reading in elementary and junior high (p. e72). Some limitations are Zhang et al. (2013) combined data sets from multiple sources, posing validity of results. The authors also had BLLs that were missing, which could induce bias. Because the study population was limited only to Detroit, and the school was predominately black, this study might not be used by other groups (p.