Hair and blood as substrates for screening children for lead poisoning

In Russia, hair, rather than blood, is usually used as a substrate for scre ening children for lead poisoning. We attempted to gauge the accuracy of th is method by comparing these two methods. The evaluation was done in Sarato v, Russia. We collected hair and blood samples from 189 children who attend ed 11 kindergartens. Their mean blood lead concentration was 9.8 mu g/dl (r ange = 3.1-35.7 mu g/dl), and their mean hair lead concentration was 7.2 mu g/g (range = 1.0-7.2 mu g/g [i.e., 1.0 being the lowest detectable limit]) . Hair lead concentration as a screening method had 57% sensitivity and res ulted in 18% of the children being classified as false-negatives. We conclu de, therefore, that measuring hair lead concentration is not an adequate me thod with which to screen children for lead poisoning.