Reply to letter to the editor Reply to comments on “ Identi fi cation of lead sources in residential environments : Sydney Australia

We would like to start by thanking Brian Gulson for taking time to highlight his concerns and bringing our findings to the attention of Environmental Pollution readers. In constructing our response to Brian Gulson’s commentary, we had difficulty in deciphering which of Gulson’s (2014) “submitted for publication” references were being referred to. Gulson referred an article submitted for publication in three ways, making it difficult to ascertain which one to respond to: 1) (Gulson et al., submitted for publication), 2) (Gulson et al., 2006, submitted for publication), and 3) (Gulson et al., 2013). Therefore, we have had to use our best guess as to which publication(s) that we were intended to respond to. In the following text, Professor Gulson’s comments have been placed in italics and in a bold font. The terminology “Pb poisoning” is alarmist especially for parents of young children and has been discontinued by, for example, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in their current recommendations at low blood Pb (PbB) levels and by respected experts in the Pb field (e.g. Canfield et al., 2003). While we prefer to use the term “lead poisoning” in our paper, we acknowledge that there is no international consensus on its precise definition. However, we defend its use because it brings to more immediate attention to the well-known risks associated with lead exposure, particularly in children at very low levels (i.e. <10 mg/dL) (see for example United States National Toxicology Program, 2012). The dangers of exposure to environmental lead (Pb) have been down-played consistently in the Australian context (Gulson et al., 2008; Taylor and Schniering, 2010; Taylor et al., 2011, 2012b, 2013; Taylor, 2012; Mackay et al., 2013), which has not been overly helpful in addressing legacy Pb issues in urban cities or locations associated with metal mining and smelting activities. Similar challenges have been identified in the United States context where lead paint exposures have been particularly problematic (Bellinger and Bellinger, 2006; Markowitz and Rosner, 2013). The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (2009) does not refer to Pb poisoning directly but refers to acute effects at levels of 70e100 mg/dL and longer-term effects from much lower levels of exposure i.e. at 10 mg/dL or lower. Bellinger and Bellinger (2006) summarize the spectrum of Pb exposure effects and identify that developmental toxicity including decreased IQ, hearing, growth, impaired peripheral nerve function and transplacental transfer is evident at exposures below 10 mg/dL of PbB (see also United States National Toxicology Program, 2012). The recent WHO Childhood Lead Poisoning report (2010, p. 12) makes the