Summary
Two separate studies are described in which young children (one sample aged 2.5 years and one aged 5.5 years) were assessed on a wide variety of cognitive, neuropsychological and behavioural parameters. Blood lead concentration, derived from a single sample of venous blood, was the indicator of lead body-burden. Extensive measures of family characteristics were also taken.
The results show that both samples had generally low blood lead concentrations with means of 15.6 μg dl-1 and 12.8 μg dl-1 for the younger and older sample respectively. In general, there were few significant relationships between blood lead and the outcome measures on initial analysis and those that did arise were small. Multivariate analysis showed that even fewer remained significant after accounting for confounding variables.
Caution is expressed at interpreting and generalizing these results to other populations.
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References
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© 1989 ECSC-EEC-EAEC, Brussels — Luxembourg; EPA, USA
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Harvey, P.G., Hamlin, M.W., Kumar, R., Morgan, J., Spurgeon, A., Delves, T. (1989). The Birmingham Blood Lead Studies. In: Smith, M.A., Grant, L.D., Sors, A.I. (eds) Lead Exposure and Child Development. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0847-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0847-5_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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