Presence of lead in hair of young university students in Leicester, England.

Recently, large Human Bio-monitoring (HBM) projects have been carried out in different European countries as a tool to assess exposure to environmental pollutants. However, there are little data about the presence of metals in human hair in English populations, especially in children and young adults, even though such members of the population are more susceptible to environmental contaminants. 109 (20.5 ± 1.1 yrs-old; 32 male and 77 female) undergraduate students at De Montfort University (DMU, UK) were recruited between 2015-2016; student’s sex, age, weight, height and continental origin, was gathered. A Tanita® scale was used to determine (in %) body fat, water, muscle and bone mass. According to their body fat percentage, 28.4% were overweight and 7.3% underweight; female participants presented a higher prevalence of overweight. Scalp hair was collected, following previous methods, from 70 participants only (14 female, 56 male) from a diverse ethnic background (26 Asia, 24 Africa, 19 Europe, 1 America). Lead (Pb) content was determined in hair by ICP-MS after appropriate pre-treatment of each sample for eliminating exogenous contamination. Hair Pb concentration in female and male participants, respectively, were as follows (mean, median and percentiles are provided in µg/g): Pb [0.52, 0.28 (0.15, 0.75) vs. 0.48, 0.33 (0.19, 0.60)]. The content of Pb in hair did not show dependency on sex or ethnic background, which is in disagreement with a similar study performed by our group in Spanish university students (20-24 yrs-old), which showed significantly higher levels of Pb in female students. The absence of significance in DMU participants might be attributed to the differences in the number of hair samples collected by sex. A Pearson correlation study highlighted that Pb was not correlated with any of the anthropometric variables monitored. The presence of Pb in hair in the studied population could be attributed to dietary sources.