Abstract

For the purpose of establishing the preventive program against the health consequences of lead exposure and obtaining the effective biological monitoring data, the author investigated the values of biological parameters relating to lead exposure and the degree of influences on blood pressure level by these parameters including general characteristics in 192 female industrial workers dealing with lead(lead-exposed group) and 126 female official workers(non-exposed group). The summarized results were as follows; 1. Between the lead-exposed group and non-exposed group, the significant differences were showed in urinary coproporphyrin, urinary delta-aminolevulinic acid, urinary lead and blood lead amount. 2. Between the low blood lead group(less than 30 microgram/dl) and high blood lead group(more than 30 microgram/dl) in lead-exposed group, there were significant differences in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, urinary coproporphyrin, urinary lead and blood lead. 3. Among the parameters relating to lead exposure, the distribution of concentration of urinary coproporphyrin, urinary lead and blood lead showed normal distributed type in lead-exposed and non-exposed group. But the case of urinary delta-aminolevulinic acid showed bimodal type. On the other hand, dividing the lead-exposed group into low blood lead and high blood lead group, irregular distributed type were showed in all 4 kinds of parameters. 4. The parameters relating to lead exposure which showed significant correlation to blood pressure were absent in non-exposed group, but there were statistically significant simple correlation among the diastolic blood pressure and urinary lead and blood lead in high blood lead group. 5. The distribution of blood pressure by the concentration of parameters relating to lead exposure were not showed specific mode in non-exposed group, but there was increasing tendency with the higher concentration of parameters relating to lead exposure in lead-exposed group. Especially in high blood lead group, the increasing tendency of blood pressure with the level of urinary lead and blood lead were predominant. 6. The opportunity to explain variation of each blood pressure by the 4 kinds of parameters relating to lead exposure were 11.0-12.6% in lead exposed group and 12.0-15.4% in high blood lead group comparing to 5.3-6.1% in non-exposed group.