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Childhood lead biokinetics and associations with age among a group of lead-poisoned children in China

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 29, pages 416–423 (2019)Cite this article

Abstract

Childhood lead exposure has been shown to have a significant effect on neurodevelopment. Many of the biokinetics involved with lead biomarkers in children still remain unknown. Two hundred fifty (157 in the exposed group and 93 controls) children were enrolled in our study and lead exposed children returned for multiple visits for measurement of blood and bone lead and chelation treatment. We demonstrated that the correlation between blood and bone lead increased with subsequent visits. We calculated the blood lead half-life for 50 patients, and found a significant (p-value < 0.001) positive correlation with age. For ages 1–3 years (N = 17), the blood lead half-life was found to be 6.9 ± 4.0 days and for 3+ years it was found to be (N = 33) 19.3 ± 14.1 days. In conclusion, the turnover of lead in children is faster than in adults. Our results indicate that blood lead is a more acute biomarker of exposure than previously thought, which will impact studies of children’s health using blood lead as a biomarker.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Jian Xu and Yanfen Lin for their tremendous help on subject recruitment and data collection. The research could not be done without them. The authors would also like to thank the MOE-Shanghai Key Laboratory of Children’s Environmental Health at Xinhua Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine for providing much needed support and resources for the project. This work was supported by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Faculty Development Grant NRC-HQ-84-14-G-0048, National Natural Science Foundation of China (81373016, 30901205), National Basic Research Program of China (“973” Program,2012CB525001), Shanghai Science and Technology Committee (124119a1400), Purdue Ross Fellowship, and Purdue US-China visiting scholar network travel grant program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Health Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Aaron J. Specht & Linda H. Nie

  2. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, 02215, USA

    Aaron J. Specht & Marc Weisskopf

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  1. Aaron J. Specht
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Correspondence to Linda H. Nie.

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Specht, A.J., Weisskopf, M. & Nie, L.H. Childhood lead biokinetics and associations with age among a group of lead-poisoned children in China. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 29, 416–423 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-018-0036-y

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