Abstract
BackgroundHen eggs contaminated with lead can be harmful to the health of children and adults. The objective of this pilot study was to investigate if sub-chronic treatment with ascorbic acid can reduce lead levels in the different parts of hen eggs after intentionally exposing the laying hens to a concentrated source of lead.MethodsClinically normal mixed-breed egg laying hens (n = 18) were used in this pilot study. Hens were exposed to a concentrated source of lead (200 mg/kgbody weight/day lead acetate) for 1 week. Subsequently, egg laying hens were either treated with sub-chronic doses of ascorbic acid (500 mg/kgbody weight/day) or left untreated for 4 weeks. Lead levels were assessed in egg-shell, egg-albumen, and egg-yolk samples using a graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrophotometer.ResultsLead levels increased significantly (p-value < 0.01) from baseline in egg-yolk, egg-albumen, and egg-shell samples following 1 week exposure to lead acetate. Sub-chronic treatment of egg laying hens with high doses of ascorbic acid could bring statistically significant reduction (p-value < 0.01) in lead levels in egg-yolk, egg-albumen, and egg-shell samples after intentional exposure to a concentrated source of lead.ConclusionsFindings of this pilot study showed that sub-chronic treatment of egg laying hens with ascorbic acid can reduce lead levels in different egg parts after intentional exposure to a concentrated source of lead. Supplementing feedstuffs and water with sources of ascorbic acid could be beneficial in reducing lead levels in hen egg tissues following environmental exposure. Further studies are still required to investigate if ascorbic acid can reduce lead levels in other chicken tissues.
Highlights
Hen eggs contaminated with lead can be harmful to the health of children and adults
We investigated the effects of sub-chronic doses of ascorbic acid on lead levels in the different portions of hen eggs after intentionally exposing the laying hens to a concentrated source of lead
Lead levels after 4 weeks without treatment with subchronic doses of ascorbic acid (98.2 ± 11 μg Pb/g eggalbumen) were not statistically different (p-value > 0.05) from those seen after 1 week of exposing hens to lead acetate
Summary
Hen eggs contaminated with lead can be harmful to the health of children and adults. A Shawahna et al BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology (2020) 21:17 growing body of research has shown that eggs laid by hens exposed to environmental pollution contain considerable levels of potentially harmful elements such as heavy metals [6, 7]. It has been suggested that after ingestion by hens, heavy metals can deposit in different tissues including eggs laid by hens exposed to pollution [2, 8]. Recent studies have shown that plants and grains grown upon soils contaminated with lead contained elevated levels of this toxic heavy metal [10, 15, 16]. Children exposed to lead were shown to report poor academic and scholastic achievements [22,23,24]
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