MacIntosh D L, Williams P L, Hunter D J, Sampson L A, Morris S C, Willett W C, Rimm E B
Department of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens 30602, USA.
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 1997 Dec;6(12):1043-50.
Inorganic arsenic intake in 969 men and women and methylmercury intake in 785 men and women from across the United States were assessed by a semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire, in combination with a database for the content of those elements in foods, and by toenail concentrations of arsenic and mercury. In addition, empirical weights for foods on the dietary questionnaire were derived from multivariate regression models to estimate associations between diet and toenail arsenic and mercury levels, independent of the assumptions about inorganic arsenic and methylmercury in foods, which are based upon limited residue measurements. The use of empirical weights significantly improved the correlation of arsenic consumption with toenail arsenic levels (r = 0.33, P = 0.0001), compared with the weak correlation obtained using the food residue method to calculate intake (r = 0.15, P = 0.0001). Mercury consumption computed using empirical weights yielded a significant correlation with toenail arsenic (r = 0.42, P = 0.001), similar to the correlation using energy-adjusted intake calculated from food residue tables (r = 0.35, P = 0.001). These results illustrate the potential use of empirically derived weights for foods in estimating toenail levels of selected heavy metals and support the validity of published food residue data that are used to estimate mercury consumption.
通过半定量食物频率问卷，并结合食物中这些元素含量的数据库，以及指甲中砷和汞的浓度，对来自美国各地的969名男性和女性的无机砷摄入量以及785名男性和女性的甲基汞摄入量进行了评估。此外，膳食问卷中食物的经验权重来自多元回归模型，以估计饮食与指甲中砷和汞水平之间的关联，而不受基于有限残留量测量的食物中无机砷和甲基汞假设的影响。与使用食物残留法计算摄入量得到的弱相关性（r = 0.15，P = 0.0001）相比，使用经验权重显著改善了砷摄入量与指甲砷水平之间的相关性（r = 0.33，P = 0.0001）。使用经验权重计算的汞摄入量与指甲砷具有显著相关性（r = 0.42，P = 0.001），与使用食物残留表计算的能量调整摄入量的相关性相似（r = 0.35，P = 0.001）。这些结果说明了经验得出的食物权重在估计选定重金属指甲水平方面的潜在用途，并支持用于估计汞摄入量的已发表食物残留数据的有效性。
