Lead Intoxication and Its Sources of Exposure

Abstract

Lead is poisonous and produces a variety of negative clinical outcomes in both children and adults. Human exposure to lead occurs predominantly in the environment, at work, and in the home. The aim of current study is to explore various sources of lead (Pb) exposure in environment that can induce lethal complication in human beings. The literature was searched form various research data basis like google scholar, pubmed and scopus by using different key words such as “lead exposure”, “occupational lead exposure”, “non-occupational lead exposure” etc. A total of 40 papers were searched and out of those only 18 papers were selected for this study. Human exposure to lead can occur predominantly through environment, at work, and in the home. Water, soils, paint chips from older homes, and dust are all major concerns. Ingestion of lead from water is a prevalent cause of lead exposure in many families, and corrosion of lead service lines, outdated fixtures, and/or lead solder that link drinking water pipes is one of the primary sources of lead in drinking water. There are two major sources of lead exposure namely occupational and non-occupational sources. The children and adult populations both are susceptible to heavy metals exposure as result of which various metabolic and genetic complications can be raised.

Keywords: lead; exposure; occupational; non-occupational