Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the reasons for increases in levels of lead poisoning in children.

The UK Health Security Agency coordinates the Lead in Children Exposure Surveillance System, a passive surveillance system covering England, which aims to identify elevated blood lead concentrations, greater than 0.24µmol/L, the equivalent to ≥5μg/dL, in children under 15 years old.

Between 2016 to 2020, the annual number of cases ranged between 33 and 49. From 2021 there was a marked increase in the number of cases. The steep rise in reported cases from 2021 onwards is due to a change in the case definition in our surveillance system. Following a review of the evidence of the harm of lead exposure in children, the public health intervention concentration was lowered from 0.48μmol/L, the equivalent to ≥10μg/dL, to 0.24μmol/L, the equivalent to ≥5μg/dL.