Lead, biomolecular speciation

In conclusion, accurate and precise measurements of lead, including environmental and human lead burdens relative to natural levels, lead cycling and metabolism, and lead biomolecular speciation, are required to fully evaluate the problem of lead contamination and toxicity in the biosphere. Current data demonstrate that environmental lead levels are often more than 10-fold and sometimes more than 10,000-fold higher than natural levels. Although regulation of many lead-containing products in some industrialized countries has resulted in a reduction in some lead discharges into the biosphere, the demonstrated persistence of contaminant lead indicates that environmental lead levels will remain substantially elevated for a protracted time. 

It is apparent that the extent of sublethal lead toxicity in humans may be best addressed by studies that consider control populations possessing natural (i.e., preindustrial) lead burdens, as well as state-of-the-art, trace-metal-clean techniques and advanced instrumentation. Trace-metal-clean techniques are required to prevent the inadvertent lead contamination of samples, which has plagued many previous analyses of environmental and human lead levels. Advanced instrumentation is required to provide the sentivity, accuracy, and precision that are needed to quantify the sublethal effects of lead concentrations at environmental levels of exposure. Fortunately, methodologies utilizing these advancements are now capable of addressing many of the important issues (e.g., lead biomolecular speciation, low exposure effects) in environmental and human lead toxicology. 

J. Szpunar, P. Pellerin, A. Makarov, T. Doco, P. Williams, B. Medina, R. Lobinski, Speciation analysis for biomolecular complexes of lead in wine by size-exclusion high-performance liquid chromatography D inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, J. Anal. Atom. Spectrom., 13 (1998), 749D754. 

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