Breast Milk Lead Concentrations of Mothers Living Near Tin Smelters.

We compared Pb concentration in human milk from 37 mothers living in a neighborhood of tin-ore smelters to that from 45 mothers living in a fishing community. The median breast-milk-Pb (BM-Pb) concentration was significantly ( p = 0.0000001) higher (11.3 μg L; ≤0.96-29.4 μg L) in mothers living in the vicinity of smelters than that of rural mothers (1.9 μg L; ≤0.96-20.0 μg L). These mothers also showed a statistically significant correlation between length of residence and BM-Pb concentration (Spearman r = 0.6864; p < 0.0001). The estimated median exposure (for infants <6 months) was 3.0 μg kg b.w. for rural infants compared to 7.5 μg kg b.w. for infants in the vicinity of metal smelters. Overall, most BM-Pb concentrations (79 %) in the metal smelter area were above the critical limit of 5.0 μg L set by the WHO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]