Study: Eating a Regular Breakfast May Help Reduce Lead Poisoning

April 4, 2011

Eating breakfast is good for you — it's been linked to weight loss and improved

nutrition — and now new research suggests it may also help protect children from

lead poisoning.

Reporting in the journal Environmental Health, scientists from China show that

children who regularly ate breakfast lowered their blood levels of lead by 15%

compared with those who skipped the first meal of the day in a six month study.

Previous research has shown that in adults, fasting can increase the absorption

of lead, presumably because minerals in food, such as calcium and phosphate, may

compete with lead for absorption by tissues. Past data suggest that food

decreases the absorption of lead in the gut by as much as 10 times in adults.

That's why the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends

that children who might be exposed to high concentrations of environmental

sources of lead eat regular meals and snack often.

The most common sources of lead include lead-based paint (even after it has

dried), drinking water contaminated by older pipes and plumbing, lead-glazed

pottery and crystal, and cosmetics such as kohl. Among the 1,344 Chinese

children studied in Jintan, pollution from lead-based gasoline, which was phased

out in 2000, was also a prominent source of exposure; in recent years, as many

as 24% of youngsters under 14 in the country still had blood lead levels greater

than those established by the U.S. CDC as acceptable.

The Chinese findings are the first to document that being well-nourished can

help children lower their risk of lead poisoning. The authors hope parents will

make note of the findings, but for that to happen, they note, parents need to be

made aware of the dangers of lead exposure.

In the study, parents with more education or who had technical or professional

jobs were more likely to get their children to eat breakfast. That suggests that

public health officials should focus on educating parents about the benefits of

breakfast as a proactive way to lower their youngsters' exposure to lead, and

potentially reduce their risk of developing behavioral and cognitive problems

later on.

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