Urban Lead Exposures of Children in Cincinnati, Ohio

Abstract

Environmental dust lead and other lead measures were highly intercorrelated for the wide range of housing in the Cincinnati prospective study. The causal pathway revealed by the data (soil and paint lead to surface dust lead to hand lead to blood lead) has been used to develop intervention strategies to reduce blood lead and hand lead levels which are currently being implemented in the Cincinnati Soil Lead Abatement Demonstration Project. These interventions, soil lead abatement, exterior dust abatement, and interior dust abatement, are being applied in various combinations in an examination of data for children residing in a single type of housing from birth, blood lead levels were compared according to three paint lead categories (low: < 2 mg cm⁻²; medium: 2.1 to 6.0 mg cm⁻², and high: > 6.0mg cm⁻²). Geometric mean blood lead values were 14.1 and 12.1 μg dL⁻¹, respectively, for the low and medium paint lead categories and much greater for children living in housing in the highest paint lead category, 24.8 μg dL⁻¹. These data suggest that for situations similar to those in Cincinnati, priority for lead-based paint abatement should be considered for the housing with paint lead above 6 mg cm⁻². A Ln—Ln relationship between environmental lead and blood lead for children in the Cincinnati study was found to represent the data much more closely than did a linear relationship such as that used in the current US EPA Lead Uptake/Biokinetic Model.