Our Associate Professor Frank Di Traglia is co-lead of a cross-disciplinary team awarded the UKRI funding to combat lead poisoning in UK children. The ECLIPS project, Elevated Childhood Lead Interagency Prevalence Study, is one of only 36 selected from nearly 900 applications for the UKRI Cross-Research Council Responsive Mode scheme. This scheme is designed to break down traditional academic silos, promoting innovative, collaborative research to address pressing societal challenges.
The ECLIPS project will 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. Despite lead’s well-known toxicity, no such programme currently exists in the UK. The project will initially be piloted in Leeds, with potential for national rollout and policy recommendations.
Commenting on the project, Frank stated “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.”
Lead exposure harms children’s cognitive development, with consequences that extend beyond individual children to affect entire schools and communities. Led by Professor Jane Entwistle (Northumbria University), the project brings together researchers from Oxford, Warwick, Northumbria, and Bristol, alongside government health agencies. This work reflects UKRI's commitment to fostering bold, cross-disciplinary research to solve critical issues like environmental health. Professor Alison Park, Deputy Executive Chair of ESRC, emphasized that the funded projects are expected to drive progress by combining diverse perspectives and innovative methodologies.
