Lead in Bone. IV. Distribution of Lead in the Human Skeleton

Abstract

Flameless atomic absorption spectroscopy was used to measure lead concentrations in samples from 5 selected human skeletal sites (tibia, skull, rib, ilium, and vertebra) obtained from 134 hospital autopsies. Lead was distributed unequally among the different bones in distinct patterns that were age-, and to some extent, sex-dependent. To estimate lead concentration of the entire skeleton, all skeletal bones were divided into 5 groups based on their approximate compact/trabecular bone ratios, considering each of our 5 sampled sites to be the prototype for each such group. Regression analysis of the 10 possible bone site pair values at different ages yielded age-related constants. These constants were incorporated into an equation we developed that can be used both to estimate mean skeletal lead concentration (Pb) of the entire body skeleton and also to predict the lead concentration at any of the other 4 bone sites if any 1 of the 5 is measured. Applications of these data to in vivo bone lead measurements are detailed with respect to selection of the site to be measured, estimation of total skeletal lead burden, anticipated variations or error, and dependence of these factors on age and sex of the sampled population.

Dietary lead intakes for mother/child pairs and relevance to pharmacokinetic models.

“…4-7) or the change is in by a more rapid change in the child's blood mothers; and 3) the children have lower the opposite direction to the change in isoisotopic composition towards the Australian body lead stores than adults (30,31) so that topic composition of the diet (Fig. 7, 9, 10).…”

“…The children were between 6 and 11 years of age and the mothers were between 29 and 37 years of age. These data were compared with an Ausrlian control motherchild pair, aged 31 to 70% for the mothers and 12 to66% for the dren. The difference between mothers and children is not statistically significant (p = 0.28).…”

Lifestyle‐Determined Gender and Hierarchical Differences in the Lead Contamination of Bones from a Feudal Town of the Edo Period

“…Lead concentrations in the bone constantly increase with age in both sexes. The analysis of lead in bone specimens can be used to monitor lead contamination in human beings [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] . In this paper, we intended to evaluate the total amount of lead exposure and accumulation in populations using human bones excavated at archeological sites, however, a confounding problem is that bones are exposed to post-mortem absorption of lead in the ground [29][30][31] .…”

The Use of K X-Ray Fluorescence for Measuring Lead Burden in Epidemiological Studies: High and Low Lead Burdens and Measurement Uncertainty

“…Since lead concentrations have been shown to vary somewhat within otherwise homogenous sections ofbone (14), phantoms provided a more faithful target for accuracy testing at low levels oflead concentration. These experiments demonstrated a high degree ofprecision and accuracy, with a correlation coefficient for combined data of0.98, a linear regression slope of 1.02, and an X-intercept of 1 pg lead/g bone mineral (Fig.…”