Determinants of bone and blood lead levels among teenagers living in urban areas with high lead exposure

Although lead has been extensively studied in children, its sources and effects remain unclear in adolescents. This study examined the relation of blood and tibia bone lead levels to lead determinants. One hundred adolescents living in Mexico City and surrounding suburbs were studied. Blood lead was measured by atomic absorption spectroscopy, and tibia lead was measured by a K X-ray Fluorescence (KXRF) instrument. Blood lead ranged from 1.8 to 29.2 mu g/dl, with a mean of 7.4 mu g/dl. Bone lead ranged from <1 to 44.82 pg Pb/g bone mineral, with a mean of 4.8 mu g Pb/g. Predictors of bone lead included higher traffic density near the home, mother's smoking history, and time spent outdoors. Predictors of log-transformed blood lead included bone lead levels, male sex, use of lead-glazed ceramics, and living in Mexico City. Bone lead remained a significant predictor of blood lead after adjusting for covariates in a final multivariate regression model. In our final model, a rise in bone lead from the middle of the lowest quintile to the middle of the highest quintile (a difference of 21.6 mu g Pb/g) was associated with an increase in blood lead of 1.2 mu g/dl. Our data suggest that in addition to current sources of environmental lead exposure, bone lead accumulated over time constitutes a moderate source of circulating lead during adolescence and may account for some of the adverse health effects documented in recent studies.