Temporal trends in urban and rural blood lead concentrations

A long term programme to assess the impact of reduced lead emissions in the UK has been established in central London and rural Suffolk. Blood lead concentrations of 5 and 6 year old children and their mothers both show an urban-rural difference of about 1.5 g/dl, which is related to the urban-rural differences in air and dust lead concentrations between areas.This paper is also being published in Proceedings of the Conference on Lead in the Home Environment and is one of several selected from SEGH sponsored conferences for simultaneous publication in this journal.