An Association Between Incipient Renal Damage and Urine Levels of Cadmium and Lead in a Group of Russian Preschool Children

An Approach to Characterizing the Type of Combined Environmental Toxicity Based on Epidemiologically Assessed Exposure-Response Relationships

“…Meanwhile, chronic nephro-urinary diseases in children cause a considerable public health concern in Russia due to their high prevalence, especially in some industrial regions such as the Middle Urals [11]. In this region, a lot of urban areas are extensively contaminated due to high emissions of lead, cadmium, and other pollutants.…”

“…To the extent of our knowledge, the epidemiological study that provided materials for the present analysis was the first case-control study devoted to the problem of damage to kidneys in children due to the combined effect of cadmium and lead [11] . However, in order to evaluate renal damage resulting from relatively low urinary cadmium and lead levels, in that research children with explicit renal disease were excluded because such disease can arise from multiple causes that could confound the analysis and reduce the ability to detect renal damage due just to the impact of the metals.…”

“…The source of epi data used for our analysis was a study carried out by our team in 2004-2005 [11]. In that study, 3 to 7 years old preschool children from four towns in the Middle Urals, three of which are located close to copper refineries, were examined by qualified pediatricians-nephrologists.…”

“…In this paper, we would like to offer a specific example of a solution to the problem based on the above considered principles using our own earlier published epidemiological data on the dependence of preclinical kidney damage in children on environmentally caused exposure to lead and cadmium estimated by the concentrations of these metals in urine [11]. Both metals are polytropic (poly-organ and polysystem) poisons but kidneys suffer from both lead and cadmium chronic intoxication.…”

Enhancing Population’s Resistance to Toxic Exposures as an Auxilliary Tool of Decreasing Environmental and Occupational Health Risks (a Self-Overview)

“…Another concern with regard to children's health in our region and, in particular, in the cities and towns located near the copper smelters is a considerably higher prevalence of kidney diseases as compared with the rest of Russia. Assuming that this situation may be connected with increased environmental exposure of children not only to lead but also to cadmium, we carried out two epidemiological studies, the methods and findings of which were described in detail by us earlier [26]. The results obtained in these two independent studies on children dwelling in 4 towns suggested that the combined cadmium and lead exposures that result in relatively low body burdens of these metals in children could cause a pre-clinical renal damage manifesting itself by an increase in beta 2-microglobulin urine concentrations (B2u) even though these were not above the widely recognized diagnostic level of 300 µg/L.…”