Misled about lead: an assessment of online public health education material from Australia’s lead mining and smelting towns

Sullivan, Marianne; Green, Donna

doi:10.1186/s12940-015-0085-9

Cited by 60 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(21 reference statements)

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“…[25, 26, 28] Findings from these studies were consistent with observed associations in the present study. Findings from the present study showed a greater risk of neonatal, post-neonatal, child and under-five mortality when mothers reported no separate kitchen in the house and used polluting fuels for cooking, and also found increased risk of childhood mortality even where clean fuels were used but no separate kitchen in the house.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Household air pollution from use of cooking fuel and under-five mortality: The role of breastfeeding status and kitchen location in Pakistan

2017

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Household air pollution (HAP) mainly from cooking fuel is one of the major causes of respiratory illness and deaths among young children in low and middle-income countries like Pakistan. This study investigates for the first time the association between HAP from cooking fuel and under-five mortality using the 2013 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) data. Multi-level logistic regression models were used to examine the association between HAP and under-five mortality in a total of 11,507 living children across four age-groups (neonatal aged 0–28 days, post-neonatal aged 1–11 months, child aged 12–59 months and under-five aged 0–59 months). Use of cooking fuel was weakly associated with total under-five mortality (OR = 1.22, 95%CI = 0.92–1.64, P = 0.170), with stronger associations evident for sub-group analyses of children aged 12–59 months (OR = 1.98, 95%CI = 0.75–5.25, P = 0.169). Strong associations between use of cooking fuel and mortality were evident (ORs >5) in those aged 12–59 months for households without a separate kitchen using polluting fuels, and in children whose mother never breastfed. The results of this study suggest that HAP from cooking fuel is associated with a modest increase in the risk of death among children under five years of age in Pakistan, but particularly in those aged 12–59 months, and those living in poorer socioeconomic conditions. To reduce exposure to cooking fuel which is a preventable determinant of under-five mortality in Pakistan, the challenge remains to promote behavioural interventions such as breastfeeding in infancy period, keeping young children away from the cooking area, and improvements in housing and kitchen design.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Household air pollution from use of cooking fuel and under-five mortality: The role of breastfeeding status and kitchen location in Pakistan

2017

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“…Risk factors that can affect exposure to pollution from soil and air include lifestyle factors and structural factors which are beyond the agency of residents. Attempts by governing bodies and the mines to address elevated BLLs have been aimed at changing personal behaviours that can increase exposure to lead (Forbes and Taylor 2015, Sullivan andGreen 2016). These have focused on the regular washing of hands and table surfaces in homes, growing lawns and regularly eating fresh fruit to reduce uptake of lead (Sullivan and Green 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental justice analyses may hide inequalities in Indigenous people’s exposure to lead in Mount Isa, Queensland

Cooper

Green

Sullivan

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Distributive environmental justice studies frequently identify how ethnic minorities and communities of low socio-economic status (SES) are disproportionately likely to live in areas with an elevated risk of exposure to pollution. Few distributive justice studies have been conducted in Australia to explore whether this relationship is relevant to rural mining communities. In the remote mining city of Mount Isa, studies have found higher geometric mean blood lead levels (BLLs) among Indigenous children compared to non-Indigenous children. However, there is a lack of recent BLL data to determine conclusively if Indigenous children in Mount Isa are disproportionately exposed to lead pollution. We employed a common distributive environmental justice analysis approach to determine if Indigenous residents are disproportionately likely to live in areas with elevated soil lead concentrations. We analysed soil samples from 49 of 51 census areas at the Statistical Area 1 (SA1) level and measured the statistical correlation between soil lead concentration and the percentage of residents living in each SA1 who were of Indigenous status using Kendall's tau and linear regression. We found little evidence of an association between soil lead concentration and either Indigenous status or SES, indicating that Indigenous and low-SES residents are not disproportionately likely to live in areas with elevated concentrations of soil lead. The results of this study, along with prior research on mining emissions and housing quality in Mount Isa, indicate that elevated BLLs among Indigenous children may be due to low-SES increasing the risk of exposure as a result of lower quality housing. Actions by governing and mining bodies to address children's elevated BLLs in Mount Isa should give greater attention to risk factors related to SES. Furthermore, distributive environmental justice research must account for disparities in exposure which are not the result of disproportionate proximity to polluting sources.

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“…Moreover, integrating epidemiological findings using analytic methods to more objectively identify sex-specific vulnerable early life windows with knowledge regarding brain and nervous system developmental pathways as well as hormonal and micronutrient milieu involved in perinatal programming of neuromotor functions that may be disrupted in these time periods as summarized in recent reviews (Golding et al, 2014; Pitcher et al, 2006; Sandman et al, 2011) may better inform future mechanistic research in this area. Of note, literature on other more widely studied neurodevelopmental domains, such as cognitive and behavioral outcomes, has also suggested sex differences in relation to early life Mn exposure, where stronger adverse associations seemed to be more likely to be found in girls, although some studies did not find evidence of effect modification by sex (Coetzee et al, 2016). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex differences in sensitivity to prenatal and early childhood manganese exposure on neuromotor function in adolescents

Chiu

Henn

Hsu

et al. 2017

Environmental Research

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Introduction While studies have suggested that exposure to manganese (Mn) may be associated with neurodevelopment in school-age children, there is limited information on prenatal and postnatal Mn exposures and tremor or motor function in children. Methods We measured Mn levels in dentine of shed teeth, representing prenatal, early postnatal, and cumulative childhood exposure windows, from 195 children in Italy. Pursuit Aiming, Luria Nebraska Motor Battery, as well as Tremor and Sway system from Computerized Adaptive Testing System (CATSYS) were administered at 11–14 years old. We examined the relationships of tooth Mn (ln-transformed) with motor function using generalized linear models and generalized additive models, adjusting for age, sex, and socioeconomic status index. Effect modification by sex was also examined. Results We found that higher prenatal Mn was associated with better body stability in boys in a number of sway tests (including mean sway, transversal sway, sagittal sway, sway area, and sway intensity), while Mn was associated with poorer performance in girls on all of these metrics (all p for Mn × sex interaction <0.05). Higher prenatal Mn was also modestly associated with better hand/finger and eye-hand coordination in boys compared to girls in sex-stratified analyses, although interaction models did not reach statistical significance. For tremor, on the other hand, higher early postnatal Mn was associated with increased center frequency in girls (p for interaction<0.01), but increased Mn level at the later postnatal period was associated with increased center frequency in boys (p for interaction=0.01). Conclusions This study, which used a direct measure of prenatal and childhood Mn exposure, suggested sex-specific critical windows of early life Mn exposure in relation to neuromotor function in adolescents. The sex-specific associations might be strongest with measures of whole body stability, for which the critical exposure window was during the prenatal period.

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Misled about lead: an assessment of online public health education material from Australia’s lead mining and smelting towns

Cited by 60 publications

References 21 publications

Household air pollution from use of cooking fuel and under-five mortality: The role of breastfeeding status and kitchen location in Pakistan

Household air pollution from use of cooking fuel and under-five mortality: The role of breastfeeding status and kitchen location in Pakistan

Environmental justice analyses may hide inequalities in Indigenous people’s exposure to lead in Mount Isa, Queensland

Sex differences in sensitivity to prenatal and early childhood manganese exposure on neuromotor function in adolescents

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