title: Assessment of regional human health risks from lead contamination in Yunnan province, southwestern China.
abstract: Identification and management the 'critical risk areas' where hotspot lead exposures are a potential risk to human health, become a major focus of public health efforts in China. But the knowledge of health risk assessment of lead pollution at regional and national scales is still limited in China. In this paper, under the guidance of 'sources-pathways-receptors' framework, regional human health risk assessment model for lead contamination was developed to calculate the population health risk in Yunnan province. And the cluster and AHP (analytic hierarchy process) analysis was taken to classify and calculate regional health risk and the decomposition of the regional health risk in the greatest health risk region, respectively. The results showed that Yunnan province can be divided into three areas. The highest health risk levels, located in northeastern Yunnan, including Kunming, Qujing, Zhaotong region. In those regions, lead is present at high levels in air, food, water and soil, and high population density which pose a high potential population risk to the public. The current study also reveals that most regional health risk was derived from the child receptors (age above 3 years) 4.3 times than the child receptors (age under 3 years), and ingestion of lead-contaminated rice was found to be the most significant contributor to the health risk (accounting for more than 49% health risk of total). This study can provide a framework for regional risk assessment in China and highlighted some indicators and uncertainties.
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Hongguang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Xuelian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: Shandong Institute of Standardization, Standardization Technical Research Centre, Jinan city, Shandong province, China.
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Spatial Science Laboratory, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, United States of America.
authors.forename: Tan
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007855:Lead Poisoning / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D018570:Risk Assessment