[Exposure to lead in infancy and childhood]

We have made a study on lead poisoning taken from an ambulatory sample of 693 children belonging to Pediatric Department of Hospital General de Galicia (Santiago de Compostela), with ages between 1-14 years. Mainly, males (55.5%), rurals (79.5%) and from low-middle class (78.4%). A protocol, which includes clinic history, was applied to all the patients, together with social--demographic classification test, inquiries about possible sources of saturnism of their habitat and the different laboratory assays, blood and urine analysis and lead and erythrocyte zinc protoporphyrin (ZPP) concentrations in venous blood. In a second phase a test of lead mobilization with EDTA was done on the candidates as well as measurement of lead contents in their houses running water. Two groups were made according to, their ages, group A (1-6 years) 298 children (43%) and group B (7-14 years), 395 (56.9%) and their clinical signs, probably symptomatics 424 (61.1%) and controls 269 (38.8%). The frequency of lead overexposition is of eighteen patients (2.59%) and three are controls. All of then are rurals; high risk in eight of them (1.15%) and moderated in ten (1.44%). The concentrations in their houses running water exceed the 0.05 ppm limit. On our conclusions, we recommend the screening in children with some kind of risk and a list with other preventive measures.