In this lab, you will be asked to write a report that examines whether or not the data presented here provide evidence that parent's exposure to lead at work can place their children at risk.
This lab is taken from one currently in development for Cybergnostics, Inc.  So any comments you may have about improving the writing, or things that seem unclear, would be greatly appreciated.

Note: the final version will look much spiffier than this.  This is a very rough outline.

Summary

 The Issue:  Can parents who are exposed to lead at work inadvertently increase the
 level of lead in their children's blood?

        Lead is an environmental pollutant especially worthy of attention because of its
        damaging effects on the neurological and intellectual development of children.  The
        standard way to see whether a person has lead poisoning is a blood test for lead.
 
        Over the years several studies have found lead in the dust in the homes of people who
        work with lead--and that some of their children have "dangerously high" blood-lead
        levels.  Most of these studies looked only at the children of lead workers.  They did not
        address whether children of lead workers suffer more from lead poisoning than do
        other children.
 
        One recent study was designed to compare the blood-lead levels in children of lead
        workers with the levels in similar children whose parents did not work around lead.

 We will look at data from this comparative study on lead absorption in children to see what it
 says about the dangers of lead poisoning in the children of parents who work around lead.

The Story
Morton and colleagues (1982) collected data on lead absorption by children whose
   parents worked at a factory in Oklahoma where lead is used in the manufacture of
   batteries.  Levels of lead, in micrograms per deciliter (mg/dcl), were measured in blood
   samples taken from 33 children whose parents worked at this factory.  These children
   belong to the Exposed group.  Thirty-three children whose parents did not work at this
   factory, and whose work did not expose them to lead, were chosen for the Control
   group.  The researchers compared the lead levels in the blood of the Exposed children
   with the Control children.

Think about your answers to these questions.  You will be asked to answer them again later.

 1.  Is this an observational or a controlled study?  Why?
 

 2.  Suppose you concluded that the children of lead workers had "high" lead levels.  You
 might be tempted to conclude that the parents' exposure to lead caused the high levels.
 Might there be confounding factors that could explain the high levels?  If so, give
 examples and explain how they would act as confounders.
 

 3. How would you design the study to control for the confounding factors you
 mentioned in the last question?
 

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