The current CDC standard is zero lead for children and childbearing women.
That comes from finding clinical evidence of damage when they are down at the limits of what they can measure accurately. That standard poses a very significant question: Does lead intake in adult males follow different patterns or can we simply not measure that effect separately from the rest of the damage?
Miles, you're making a lot of unsupported assumptions (more on that below) and you're asking the wrong question here. I've spent the last 35 years studying and cleaning up hazardous waste sites and documenting their impacts on human health. Some of which have lead contamination. I've worked on sites with documented impacts to children. The reason the standard is lower for children and women of child bearing age is the effect of lead on developing brains. It has nothing to do with "intake" except that children will incidentally ingest more lead from playing in contaminated soil and eating things that adults don't.
