Blood and hair lead levels in 6-year old children according to their parents' occupation.

Some authors found higher lead levels in children whose parents are occupationally exposed to the metal, which is probably carried home with dirty work clothes. In order to verify the relevance of the risk in tile-workers' children we examined 3 groups of 5-7 years old children whose parents were: a) tile workers employed in lead areas; b) tile workers not employed in lead areas; c) workers not occupationally exposed to lead (control group). We found that lead workers children had PbB and PbH significantly higher than control children although all PbB values were lower than 30 micrograms/dl. Nevertheless this observation suggests that major attention must be paid to individual preventive measures, such as the change of work clothes and good personal hygiene after every work shift.