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Assessing Children’s Lead Exposure in an Active Mining Community Using the Integrated Exposure Uptake Biokinetic Model

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Abstract

Lead exposure has been shown to be harmful to humans in various settings and there are no safe levels of blood lead in children. At an Alternative Superfund site in Hayden-Winkelman, Arizona, with an active copper smelter and concentrator, lead exceedances in air and soil have been measured in the past 20 years. In this work, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Integrated Exposure Uptake Biokinetic (IEUBK) model was used to estimate Hayden-Winkelman children’s (age 6 months–7 years) blood lead levels (BLLs) using site-specific lead concentrations measured in indoor and outdoor air, soil, indoor dust, and drinking water. Values used by a state agency’s airborne lead risk forecast program were also evaluated to determine whether their forecasting program is useful in protecting children’s public health. Using site-specific values in the model, the results demonstrated that lead ingested via indoor dust was the major contributor to children’s BLLs. In addition, the output of the IEUBK model overestimated actual BLLs of children sampled in the community. The IEUBK model was particularly sensitive to high indoor dust levels, and these site-specific measures increased modeled BLL values. This finding is of significance as the IEUBK model is used worldwide in communities with industrial contamination. This study confirmed that the chief contributor to lead exposure in children is household dust. Thus, for lead exposure risk reduction, agencies working at Superfund sites should focus efforts on decontaminating outdoor soil and dust and indoor lead decontamination.

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Data Availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article. Data and materials are available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the time and effort of Hayden-Winkelman School District and leadership. We would also like to give a special thank you to our colleagues in the Integrated Environmental Science and Health Risk Laboratory (specifically, Jesus Solis-Leon and Kunal Palawat), Dust Laboratory, and the Arizona Laboratory for Emerging Contaminants. Lastly, we would like to thank the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality for the additional background information.

Funding

This work was in part, funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Program (P42ES04940).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science, University of Arizona, 1177 E Fourth Street, Rm. 429, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Dominika Heusinkveld & Mónica D. Ramírez-Andreotta

  2. Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health’s Division of Community, Environment & Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

    Mónica D. Ramírez-Andreotta

  3. Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

    Tania Rodríguez-Chávez & A. Eduardo Sáez

  4. Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

    Eric Betterton & Kyle Rine

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  1. Dominika Heusinkveld
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  2. Mónica D. Ramírez-Andreotta
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  3. Tania Rodríguez-Chávez
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  4. A. Eduardo Sáez
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Contributions

MDR-A conceptualized the study. methodology: MDR-A, DH, AES, EB; investigation: DH and MDR-A; resources: TR-C, KR, MDR-A; formal analysis: DH; validation: DH; writing—original draft: DH; writing—review and editing: DH, MDR-A, AES, EB; supervision: MDR-A: project administration: MDR-A.

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Correspondence to Mónica D. Ramírez-Andreotta.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Heusinkveld, D., Ramírez-Andreotta, M.D., Rodríguez-Chávez, T. et al. Assessing Children’s Lead Exposure in an Active Mining Community Using the Integrated Exposure Uptake Biokinetic Model. Expo Health 13, 517–533 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12403-021-00400-0

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