Professor DiTraglia’s project, the Elevated Childhood Lead Interagency Prevalence Study (ECLIPS), has been awarded significant funding from UKRI to develop and pilot a home-based finger-prick test for monitoring blood lead levels in children, with the aim of creating a national screening programme. ECLIPS was one of only 36 projects selected for UKRI funding from almost 900 applications. The project will initially be piloted in Leeds, with potential for national rollout and policy recommendations.
Lead poisoning is known to be particularly harmful to the developing brains of young children, and can lead to significant health issues. Despite the dangers, there is currently no screening programme in the UK to check for childhood lead exposure.
Professor DiTraglia explained the urgency of the situation, noting: “The UK has the oldest housing stock in Europe, with all of the remaining lead paint and pipes that this implies, and a legacy of industrial lead pollution that persists in the soil to this day. We know that lead is extremely harmful to the developing central nervous systems of young children, causing a range of cognitive, behavioural and health problems, but there's no recent representative data to help policymakers understand the scope of childhood lead exposure in the UK. I'm excited to be working with an amazing team to pilot what we hope will eventually develop into nationwide screening program.”
The ECLIPS project is a collaboration involving researchers from universities around the UK, including Oxford, Warwick, Northumbria, and Bristol, as well as government health agencies. Co-led by Professor Jane Entwistle from Northumbria University, this cross-disciplinary project underscores the valuable contributions our academic researchers are making to improving the world around us.