This week I read this article in the Washington Post that links lead exposure to aging in older brains.

Could it be that the "natural" mental decline that afflicts many older people is related to how much lead they absorbed decades before?

That's the provocative idea emerging from some recent studies, part of a broader area of new research that suggests some pollutants can cause harm that shows up only years after someone is exposed.

The new work suggests long-ago lead exposure can make an aging person's brain work as if it's five years older than it really is.

I read the article and immediately thought, great another thing to worry about as we renovate our old, probably contains lead somewhere, house. That lead exposure can have long term consequences years and years into the future.

"It's an emerging area" for research, said Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. It certainly makes sense that if a substance destroys brain cells in early life, the brain may cope by drawing on its reserve capacity until it loses still more cells with aging, he said. Only then would symptoms like forgetfulness or tremors appear.

We do take all the precautions that we possibly can take. In fact I wrote an entire post about home renovations and lead paint. And before we start knocking down any old plaster in our kitchen, a zipwall will be going up.

In December the New York Times ran an article titled: The Pursuit of Justice or Money, which examines the court battles happening all over the country to hold paint manufacturers responsible for the abatement costs needed to remove lead paint from homes, hospitals, daycares, and public buildings.

This interesting fact was tucked into the article, which primarily questions who benefits from this litigation.

Today, any child who has more than 10 micrograms per deciliter is considered to have an elevated blood lead level — though under these modern standards, the entire baby boomer generation had elevated blood lead levels as children.

Leaded gasoline is thought to have been the primary culprit. And yes, I still remember leaded gasoline, and I lived in a house that had been painted before 1978. Should I be worried about my childhood exposure?

DIY bloggers around the 'net:

Ellie and Dave have their toilet back. Thank goodness. Toilets are pretty important.

Gear Acres is talking about glazing points. Don't know what glazing points are? They are the little triangular metal things that hold the glass in the window frames. New windows with all their layers of glass and gas in between do not have these.

The Healy House refinishes their wood floors. I love shiny wood floors.

When she isn't blogging about her life at Notes from the Trenches or taking a year off from spending money at A Year Off, Chris is working at rescuing her house from a century of neglect and bad taste. She can also be found writing about home improvement and design at DIY This N' That.