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.