Organolead compounds, soils

Lead, like mercury, causes neurological diseases. The organolead compounds are more toxic than mineral lead salts, since they are non-polar, lipid-soluble, and more readily cross the blood-brain barrier. This disease is related to mental retardation is children, lower performance on I.Q. tests, and hyperactivity. Severe exposure in adults causes irritability, sleeplessness, and irrational behavior. Some have gone as far as to blame anti-social behavior and criminality on sub-clinical Pb poisoning. A correlation between Pb in blood and Pb in air, dust and soils has been observed in many studies. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has proclaimed a goal of reducing blood lead contents in children below 10 jag/lOOmL. 

The dithizone method has been applied for determining lead in biological samples [44,89,90], waters [8,15,91], soils [92],organic materials [93], plant materials [94,95], air (inorganic lead and organolead compounds) [96-98], silicate minerals [99], steel [2], molybdenum and tungsten [100], silver [34], cadmium [101], cobalt [11,13], boron [45], telluric acid [102], antimony sulphide [103], and gasoline [104],... 

Organolead compounds are pollutants in air, water, soil, and sediments. The toxicity of organolead species depends on the organic groups bound to the Pb atom. Lead has four stable isotopes ( Pb, Pb, Pb, and Pb) and isotopic analysis of Pb can be used for geological dating and to track environmental processes and sources of Pb species. 

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