Lead distribution in rats repeatedly treated with low doses of lead acetate

Male Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with ip injections of lead acetate (10 and 20 mg/kg) at intervals of 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24 weeks. Eight rats from each specified injection group were sacrificed 48 hr after the end of each treatment. Lead was determined in whole blood, plasma, plasma filtrate, saliva, urine, feces, brain, salivary glands, liver, kidney, testes, femur, and fur. In the liver, the concentrations of lead fluctuated; in the salivary glands and the testes, lead levels were low. In the bone, the kidney, and the brain, lead accumulated steadily and reached high levels in bone and renal tissues, but remained low in the brain. Correlation analysis showed a reciprocal relationship between blood-lead and kidney-lead in the rats treated with 10 mg lead acetate/kg (r = 0.898). In the rats treated with 20 mg lead acetate/kg, urine-lead was correlated to kidney-lead (r = 0.820). In both groups of treated rats, fur-lead was correlated to kidney-lead (r = 0.868 and r = 0.905, P less than 0.01) and brain-lead (r = 0.879 and r = 0.946, P less than 0.01).