Relationship Between Prenatal Lead Exposure and Infant Blood Lead Levels

Recent literature has shown that analyzing newborn dried blood spots (DBS) may be effective in assessing some prenatal environmental exposures, such as exposure to lead. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between prenatal exposure to lead (as measured by newborn DBS results) and blood lead levels (BLLs) in infants 6 months of age or younger, using public health registry data for infants born in Texas from July 2002 through July 2006. The Texas Child Lead Registry (TCLR) was used to identify infants with documented elevated BLLs of 10 μg/dL or higher as well as infants with documented low BLLs. BLLs for these children were compared to their corresponding newborn DBS results using Pearson correlation coefficients and exact logistic regression models. Overall, a significant but weak positive correlation was found between infant BLLs and corresponding newborn DBS lead levels (r = 0.48). However, the odds of an infant with an elevated newborn DBS lead level having an elevated BLL at 6 months of age or younger were much greater than for an infant with a low newborn DBS lead level of <5 μg/dL (adjusted odds ratio 27.95, 95% CI: 5.52–277.28). Although an association was observed between newborn DBS lead levels and BLLs in infants tested between 0 to 6 months of age, our findings suggest that prenatal exposure may not be the only significant source of lead exposure for infants ≤6 months of age.