| Prospective Study of Blood and Tibia Lead in Women Undergoing Surgical Menopause Gertrud S. Berkowitz, Mary S. Wolff, Robert H. Lapinski, and Andrew C. Todd Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA Abstract
Despite the dramatic decline in environmental lead exposure in the United States during the past couple of decades, concern has been expressed regarding mobilization during menopause of existing lead stored in bone. To investigate whether bone lead concentrations decrease and blood lead levels increase, we conducted a prospective study of 91women who were scheduled to undergo a bilateral oophorectomy for a benign condition at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City during October 1994 through April 1999. We excluded women who were younger than 30years of age or who were postmenopausal at the time of the surgery. We observed a small but significant increase in median blood lead levels between the baseline visit and the 6-month visit (0.4µg/dL, p<0.0001) , particularly for women who were not on estrogen replacement therapy (0.7µg/dL, p=0.008) . No significant change was observed in blood lead values between 6and 18 months postsurgery, nor was there evidence of significant changes in tibia lead concentrations during the follow-up period. These findings do not point to substantial mobilization of lead from cortical bone during menopause. Key words: blood lead, bone turnover, estrogen replacement therapy, lead mobilization, tibia lead. Environ Health Perspect 112:1673-1678 (2004) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7005 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 7 September 2004]
Address correspondence to G.S. Berkowitz, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Box 1172, One Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, NY 10029-6574 USA. Telephone: (212) 241-8954. Fax: (212) 241-3475. E-mail: trudy.berkowitz@mssm.edu We thank K. Paulate, J. Hutagalung, N. Ginde, and J. Tolman for their analysis of blood and bone lead levels for this study. This research was supported by grant P42 ES07384 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 6 February 2004 ; accepted 7 September 2004.
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