Abstract
Lead exposure is associated with impaired neurodevelopment among children. House dust is recognized as one of the important secondary sources of lead exposure in children. We assessed the relationship between lead contamination in house dust and blood lead level in Pakistani children. We investigated lead contamination in house dust samples collected from 59 houses in Karachi, Pakistan. The lead content of house dust in Pakistan was relatively higher than that reported in previous studies. Weekly lead intakes from house dust were considerably higher among Pakistani children. In Pakistani children, 12% (7 of 58) showed lead intake values greater than the previous Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake of lead. A correlation (Pearson’s correlation = 0.37) was found between weekly lead intake from house dust and blood lead level in Pakistani children. In addition, blood lead levels were significantly higher in children with high lead intakes than in children with low and medium lead intakes. Thus, house dust is an important source of lead exposure in Pakistani children.
Acknowledgments
We thank Yumiko Tateno and Yoko Hosoi for technical assistance and Masayuki Yamahata at the Industrial Technology Center of Tochigi Prefecture for assistance in EDXRF analysis. We are grateful to all volunteers who participated in this study by supplying vacuum cleaner dust.
Research funding: This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Food Safety Research from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (H25-Food-General-006) and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 15K08747.
Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.
Conflict of interest: Authors state no conflict of interest.
Informed consent: Consent was taken from multiparous pregnant women visiting a tertiary care hospital (Qatar Hospital, Orangi Town, Pakistan) for prenatal care, who had at least one living child between 1 and 3 years of age and who had been a resident of the city of Karachi for the past 4 years.
Ethical approval: This study was approved by the ethics review committee of Aga Khan University (#2196-chs-erc-14).
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