Lead poisoning is an environmental health hazard of global proportions. But at the same time, lead poisoning is intensely local in nature. Humans are exposed to lead in numerous products and through a myriad of pathways including air, food, dust, soil and water.

Children living in urban areas are prone to lead poisoning through automobile emissions. Blood lead concentrations higher than 10mg/dl, in children, are associated with disturbances in physical and mental growth and later in intellectual functioning.

These effects persist into adult hood and may be irreversible. Most notably, lead poisoning will cause, changes like decreased span of attention, lowered intelligence quotient and anaemia in children. Severe degree of lead poisoning may cause irreversible changes like encephalopathy and at times even death. Indian Institute of Health and Family Welfare (IIHFW), Hyderabad has conducted a study to assess the blood lead levels in children of Hyderabad city. For this study, roads in Hyderabad city were categorised into four groups on the traffic load. 1 High, 2 Medium, 3 Low traffic and 4 Industrial locations. Around 200 households with children upto 6 years were selected randomly from these traffic corridors. Lead levels were estimated by Inductively coupled Plasma Spectrometry (ICP) method.

The mean level of lead among children was found to be 15.31mg/dl. The international standards for safe limits is 10mg/dl as proposed by Centre for Disease Control (CDC), USA. Higher levels of lead in blood were observed among children belonging to the age group of 0 to 2 years.

The levels were related to the traffic load. In high, medium and low traffic areas blood lead levels were 17.4, 12.7 and 11.9mg/dl respectively. A strong inverse relationship was observed between the mean haemoglobin levels and blood lead levels. In industrial area also very low haemoglobin values were observed.