Abstract
Emerging aspects of assessing lead poisoning in childhood
Highlights
Lead exposure remains a major environmental issue around the world, as the poverty of measures to deal effectively with the problem in both developing and developed countries has led to significant ongoing exposure
This review focuses on lead poisoning in children because of the high prevalence of lead in the environment, and because the impact of lead exposure on children’s neurocognitive development, in particular, is substantial.[1]
Childhood lead remains a major public health problem for certain groups of children, African-American children in the USA,[1,7] children living in areas of low socioeconomic status,[8] children living in rural mining communities, and children in developing countries such as India and the Philippines.[9,10]
Summary
Discipline of Clinical Pharmacology and Clinical Toxicology, School of Medicine and Public Health and Calvary Mater Hospital, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia. This review covers the epidemiology of lead poisoning in children on a global scale. Newer sources of lead poisoning are identified. The methods that are used to assess a population of children exposed to lead are discussed, together with the ways of undertaking an exposure risk assessment; this includes assessing the time course and identifying sources of lead exposure. The role of isotopic fingerprinting techniques for identifying environmental sources of exposure is discussed. Among emerging data on the cognitive and behavioral effects of lead on children, the review considers the growing evidence of neurocognitive dysfunction with blood lead concentrations even below 10 mg/dl. The challenge of assessing and explaining the risk that applies to an individual as opposed to a population is discussed. Lessons learned from managing a population lead-dust exposure event in Esperance, Western Australia in 2007 are discussed throughout the review
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