Do people from Taiwan have higher heavy metal levels than those from Western countries?

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONSeveral studies have suggested that blood lead and cadmium levels that are well below the current safety standards are associated with health risks, such as peripheral arterial disease, impaired renal function and elevated blood pressure.(1-3) Menke et al reported that blood lead level was significantly associated with myocardial infarction and stroke mortality, even when it was below 0.48 μmol/L (10 μg/dL).(4) A Taiwanese study by Huang reported that seafood contamination was very common in Taiwan, and that the lead and copper levels of the rivers in Taiwan were the highest in the world.(5) The abstract of a study that investigated the concentration of heavy metals in the hair of 700 residents in Taiwan reported that most of the residents exhibited elevated heavy metal levels.(6) However, this abstract is unpublished and only found on the Internet.(6) To the best of our knowledge, there has been no formal report describing the heavy metal levels of healthy subjects in Taiwan. The two reports (5,6) indicate that the finding of elevated heavy metal levels in Taiwanese people might not be unusual. Therefore, for the present study, we hypothesised that there may be greater levels of four common heavy metals (lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium) in the blood of a Southern Taiwanese population than in Western populations.The most reliable methods for measuring body lead burden are bone X-ray fluorescence studies and calcium disodium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (CaNa 2 EDTA) mobilisation tests. This is because blood lead levels only reflect recent exposure to lead (7) and not the lead burden of the body. According to recent reports, body lead burden can be measured by collecting 72-hour urinary lead excretion after intravenous infusion of 1 g of CaNa 2 EDTA.(8,9) These reports recommend the daily collection of urine for 72 hours in a high-volume container before the urine is sent for lead measurement. If most of the lead (or other heavy metal) can be excreted during the first 24 hours after CaNa 2 EDTA infusion, then the level of heavy metal in the urine during the first 24 hours may be reflective of the body burden of these heavy metals. We hypothesised that the level of heavy metal in the urine collected in the first 24 hours would be positively correlated with the body burden of the heavy metal. Thus, the aim of the present study was twofold. First, we aimed to assess the levels of four common heavy metals (lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium) in the blood of apparently healthy Taiwanese adults and to determine whether these heavy metal levels are greater than those of adults from Western countries. Second, we aimed to test our hypothesis that the level of heavy metal in first-day urine is reflective of the body burden of heavy metals (i.e. most heavy metals are excreted during the first 24 hours). METHODSA total of 40 apparently healthy persons (34 men, six women)

Blood Mercury Levels in Children with Kawasaki Disease and Disease Outcome

“…The juvenile Taiwanese population presented the highest levels of mercury levels in blood compared to the Japanese, Korean, and American populations. Under the same race, genetic background and contact environment, not only in juvenile Taiwanese individuals, both Lee and Liu et al demonstrated the remarkably high blood total mercury in adult Taiwanese individuals (average 13.8 and 9.64 µg/L) [16,40]. Small-scale sampling shows that the mercury concentration in the urine of elderly Taiwanese people was 1.2 µg/L [41].…”

Association between Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay-Measured Kidney Injury Markers and Urinary Cadmium Levels in Chronic Kidney Disease

“…With a half-life of up to 30 years, cadmium accumulates for a long time in several organs such as the kidney, liver, tooth, and bone, and it persistently affects human health [ 7 , 8 ]. Compared to the Western population, individuals from South Asia and East Asia are believed to have a higher possibility of environmental cadmium exposure, which is mainly derived from cigarette and dietary sources; hence, cadmium exposure is an important issue in this population [ 9 , 10 ]. Among the multiple health effects of cadmium, its nephrotoxicity is well known, with an association between low-level environmental cadmium exposure and risk for CKD found in the literature [ 11 , 12 ].…”

Trend in blood lead levels in Taiwanese adults 2005–2017

“…As shown in Table 3 [ 8 – 20 ], a continuous decreasing trend exists in BLLs in Taiwan after banning leaded petrol in 2000. For example, in a study [ 8 ] conducted in 1989, Chiang and Chang reported that the mean BLL was higher for traffic policemen than for the control group (24.43 ± 5.31 μg/dL versus 20.14 ± 5.07 μg/dL, respectively; P < 0.01).…”