Human exposure to heavy metals in the vicinity of Portuguese solid waste incinerators—Part 2: Biomonitoring of lead in maternal and umbilical cord blood

As part of environmental health surveillance programs related to solid waste incinerators located near Lisbon and on Madeira Island, human biomonitoring projects have been implemented in Portugal, some of them focused on cross-sectional surveys of heavy metals in blood. One of the general aims of these programs is to provide Portuguese data on the extent and pattern of human exposure to the pollutants potentially released in the stack gases from the incinerators, namely heavy metals. The present investigation reports information specifically on blood lead levels of newborn–mother pairs living in the vicinity of the incinerators under study, as well as of statistically similar participants living outside the exposed area. For Lisbon, lead levels determined at the baseline period (T0), as well as three subsequent evaluations of potential specific impacts of the incinerator (T1, T2 and T3) are described in order to investigate spatial and temporal trends of human exposure to lead. Available data for Madeira, namely lead levels in blood from the study population before the incinerator started operation, is also described. For Lisbon, analyses showed a statistically significant decrease of lead concentrations in maternal (p<0.001)(p<0.001) and umbilical cord blood (p<0.001)(p<0.001) during the whole monitoring period. Practically “overt” transplacental exposure to lead was observed only in the Lisbon biomonitoring project and for some cross-sectional surveys. Baseline levels for Madeira were the lowest found in all observations already performed in both programs (maternal and umbilical cord mean lead levels of 0.4 μg/dl and 0.3 μg/dl, respectively). No statistical associations have been found between lead levels in blood and age neither for global populations from Lisbon and Madeira nor for specific groups included in the different observational periods.