Assessing the population-wide exposure to lead pollution in Kabwe, Zambia : blood lead level estimation based on survey data

In this study, we aim to quantitatively assess the population-wide exposure to lead pollution in Kabwe, Zambia. While Kabwe is known as one of the most significant cases of environmental pollution in the world, the available information does not provide a representative figure on residents’ lead poisoning conditions. To obtain a representative figure, we estimate blood lead level (BLL) of the representative sample of Kabwe by combining two datasets: BLL data collected based on residents’ voluntary participation to blood sampling and socioeconomic data collected for approximately 900, randomly chosen households that represent Kabwe population. The results show that the representative mean BLL is slightly lower than the one observed in previous studies but a few times higher than the recent standard BLL of 5μg/dL above which health risks become significant