Impact of lead exposure on health status and scholastic achievement of school pupils in Alexandria.

Abstract Lead exposure among children is a serious health problem affecting virtually every system in their bodies. Affection of their cognitive function with its implication of poor school performance, is one of the serious outcomes of such exposure. In an attempt to arrive to an adequate knowledge about the impact of lead exposure on the health status and scholastic achievement in school age, a cross sectional study was carried out on 250 primary school pupils aged from 8 to 10 years in Wassat region in Alexandria. The concentration, visual and hearing acuity and the cognitive function. Moreover, laboratory investigation of blood lead level of the pupils was carried out. Their final scholastic achievement at the end of the year were recorded. The results indicated that the mean blood lead level among the studied pupils was 17.36 +/- 10.67 microg/dl, more than one third of the sample (36.00%) were highly exposed to lead with blood level of 20 microg/dl and more. A significant negative correlation was found between blood lead level and the 50th percentile of weight for height (r = -0.4488), haemoglobin concentration (r = -0.6133) and IQ scores (r = -0.8150) of the pupils. While a significant positive correlation was observed with the functional visual and hearing loss (r = 0.1390 and 0.2189 respectively). Moreover, the multiple regression analysis determined that age, blood lead level, crowding index, IQ score and number of missed school days were the significant contributing variables to the final scholastic achievement of the pupils from all the studied factors.