High blood lead level among garage workers in Bangkok, public concern is necessary

Abstract

Lead is an important toxic metal agent found in many industrial processes in the present day. Lead exposure must be of particular concern because of ongoing exposure to thousands of workers in the industrial plants and recent research indicating that asymptomatic lead exposure can result in chronic toxicity manifestations. Therefore, determination and control lead exposure among the risk workers is very necessary. Like other developing countries, lead pollution becomes an important public health problem of Thailand, especially for the big cities as Bangkok but relatively few of these countries have introduced policies and regulations for significantly combating the problem. We set this pilot study to determine the blood lead levels by anodic stripping volammetry (ASV) method as a marker for lead exposure among the occupational exposed and control subjects. Totally 89 subjects, 20 control subjects and 69 garage workers (52 mechanics and 17 dye sprayers), as the representatives of occupational exposed subjects, were included into this preliminary study. The mean blood lead level in the control group was 0.32±0.07 μmol/l. The mean blood lead level in the mechanics group was 0.42±0.13 μmol/l. The mean blood lead level in the dye sprayers was 0.58±0.07 μmol/l. Significant higher blood lead levels among the mechanics and dye sprayer groups were observed (P<0.05). Based on this study, the considerations for prevention of possibly exposure to lead among the high-risk workers as public health policies was recommended.