Bone lead measurements assess chronic exposure and can be obtained via a noninvasive analytical technique based on K‐she ll x‐ray fluorescence (KXRF) spectrometry. While KXRF has been practiced by a number of laboratories around the world, this technique has not, until now, undergone an assessment of interlaboratory agreement. The study described here provides such an assessment via circulation of nine bare tibiae selected from a repository of bones that were derived from lead‐dosed goats. Fifteen KXRF systems were used by ten participating laboratories, to make five measurements on each of the nine caprine tibiae. Reported bone lead concentrations ranged from the KXRF detection limit to 63 µg g−1 bone mineral. None of the data from the ten participant laboratories was found to be a statistical outlier. However for each of the nine tibiae, differences between the 15 reported bone lead concentrations were statistically significant. The standard deviations of the five replicate KXRF‐measured concentrations ranged, across all laboratories and all tibiae, from 0.5 to 6.5 µg g−1, bone mineral. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Past occupational control of lead exposure in Taiwan, ROC, did not prevent these workers from accumulating tibia lead concentrations greater than those in similar workers elsewhere in the world.

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