Quest Diagnostics Has Published Enormous Lead Contamination Study

Quest Diagnostics is again using its enormous trove of patient data to shed light on a public health issue: lead contamination.

The New Jersey-based national laboratory published a study in the most recent issue of the Journal of Pediatrics indicating that lead contamination among children is prevalent throughout significant areas of the United States.

The study was released less than a year after a crisis of lead-tainted drinking water emerged in the city of Flint, Mich. Flint had the element leach out of its water pipes after a city manager appointed by the state’s governor decided to switch water supplies in order to save money. Quest officials said the study was begun before Flint made headlines.

The Quest study was enormous: It involved more than 5.2 million tests of children conducted by the company between 2009 and last year. Of those, about three-quarters were blood-based assays.

According to Quest spokesperson Wendy Bost, the assays were part of routine blood testing conducted by physicians that contracted with Quest for diagnostic services. The data was de-identified.

The findings were sobering: Although lead levels declined during much of the study’s timeframe, 3.1 percent of boys and 2.8 percent of girls still had blood levels higher than the guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But various communities in upstate New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania had much higher blood lead levels, often at double- digit percentages of the population tested, linked primarily to many older structures that contained lead-based paint. States such as Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio and Connecticut had high-lead blood levels approaching or exceeding 7 percent. High lead blood levels in Mississippi more than doubled during the study, from 3.1 percent to 6.3 percent.

“These alarming findings show that while our nation has made progress in addressing lead exposure, our public health successes are neither complete nor demographically consistent,” said Harvey W. Kaufman, Quest’s senior medical director and a co-author of the study, in a statement. “We have a long way to go, both in terms of contaminated water and residual lead-based paint, to reduce disparities that put some of our children at disproportionate risk of exposure to lead.”

The lead study was Quest’s second one in little more than a year that focuses on public health on a national level.

In March 2015, Quest released a study about the levels of adult-onset diabetes among Medicaid and non-Medicaid expansion populations, showing a troubling increase in diagnosed cases of the disease in states that expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act.

Quest has also released studies previous to that on trends in food allergies and cholesterol levels, although the sample size of the lead test is considerably larger. The company is also well-known for an annual study on drug usage.

Bost said Quest has a staff of about 650 physicians and doctorate holders who publish as many as 150 studies a year in peer reviewed journals and other publications. The company announces specific findings for its national studies, which are called Quest Diagnostics Health Trends. She added that the company would continue to release national-level studies through its Health Trends label, including a study about hepatitis being conducted jointly with the CDC.

In other news, Quest said it was moving its company headquarters from Madison, N.J., to Secaucus, N.J. when the current lease on its office space expires next year. It will also move approximately 600 employees engaged in support functions from a space in Lyndhurst, N.J., to Secaucus as part of the planned move. Quest employs more than 2,300 people in New Jersey.

Takeaway: Quest Diagnostics is continuing to use a trove of patient data and test points to publicize public health issues that are of concern to the United States.