MAIZE AND FOXTAIL MILLET AS SUBSTANTIAL SOURCES OF DIETARY LEAD INTAKE

In 1996, 24-h food duplicate samples were collected from two groups of 50 non-smoking women each; one group was in Jinan, the capital city o f Shandong Province in China, and the other in a farming village in th e Zhangqiu area some 30 km away from the city. The people in the villa ge took significantly more dietary lead (46 mu g/day) than their count erparts in the city (26 mu g/day), and blood lead concentrations (35 a nd 50 mu g/l for the urban and the rural people, respectively) were in parallel with the dietary lead intake. Search for cereals as the dete rminants of dietary lead intake and blood lead concentration by multip le regression analysis showed that maize was the most influential sour ce of dietary lead intake among the four common cereals of wheat, rice , foxtail millet (to be called just millet) and maize, whereas millet was the leading determinant of the blood lead level among the four cer eals although the influential power was weaker than millet for dietary lead. Lead content in maize (47 ng/g) and millet (47 ng/g) was twice or even more times higher than the levels in wheat (26-30 ng/g) and ri ce (20-21 ng/g). The significant roles of non-rice/non-wheat cereals s uch as millet and maize as possible dietary lead sources for farming p opulations are discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.