HOUSTON -- The main ingredient in some home remedies is a substance that can leave those who take it with irreversible brain damage.

In Houston neighborhoods, little children are at risk from killers that don’t look dangerous.

“And they’re pretty too: They’re orange and red,” UT Health Science Center Dr. Lynette Mazur said.

They are poisonous powders. One of the most common is called greta, given for years by Latina mothers to their children.

They are mothers with the best of intentions, trying to bring comfort to a colicky baby or to a first-grader with a stomachache. But the home remedies they’re using contain something that is the last thing you’d want to give to a child.

“Eighty to 90 percent of that powder is lead,” nurse Judy Zoch said. She works for the Harris County Health Department.

She wouldn’t touch a tube of greta without putting on her gloves – it’s that dangerous.

The orange powder, what some consider a cure for stomach trouble and have given their children, is almost pure lead.

“They are treating their child with something that they’ve been told cures what ails them,” she said. “And it does cure what ails them, but it leaves them with something far worse.”

“Lead poisoning can kill you,” Dr. Mazur said.

She makes rounds at Shriner’s Hospital. One little girl was in for an operation, and Dr. Mazur used the opportunity to quiz the mom about her use of home remedies.

“They sounded OK,” Dr. Mazur said.

But in some cases, it’s not OK. In Harris County, health officials say one-fifth of the kids diagnosed with lead poisoning got it from home remedies.

Where’s it coming from?

“My grandmother used to have it at the store,” Maria Angle said. At an herbal shop in East Houston, owner Angle carries on a family business but said times have changed. She’s well aware of the danger, and said she does not stock cures containing lead.

“I never have that,” she said.

Still, some neighborhood folk healers continue to bring it back from Mexico and give it to their patients.

But greta isn’t the only foreign product containing lead. Some traditional Mexican clay pots contain lead.

It’s also found in make-up from Middle Eastern countries, such as eyeliner from India called Kohl. It’s often used on young girls.

And just like the stomach remedy, it’s the last thing they need.