Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 15, 2025

Atomic Absorbance Spectroscopy to Measure Intracellular Zinc Pools in Mammalian Cells
Published on: May 16, 2019
Essential and non-essential metals in children's intellectual functioning: A multi-media biomarker approach from a
Victor A Florez-Garcia1, Robert O Wright2, Alexander P Keil3
1Joseph J. Zilber College of Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, 53211, United States of America; Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60612, United States of America; Department of Public Health, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia.
Background:
Metal exposures impact children's intellectual functioning from pregnancy through early childhood and beyond, being historically evaluated with single-pollutant models which might create errors estimating individual metal impacts beyond other correlated metals which arise from the same shared sources.
Aim:
We evaluated the effect of exposure to non-essential and essential metals on the cognitive function of Mexican children at 48 months of age.
Methodology:
We included persons from the Programming Research in Obesity, Growth, Environment, and Social Stressors (PROGRESS) longitudinal birth cohort in Mexico City with biomarker data on 13 non-essential (lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, strontium, barium, and cesium) and essential (manganese, copper, selenium, molybdenum, magnesium, and zinc) metals during pregnancy and early childhood. We assessed the child's intellectual functioning with McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. We created a multi-media biomarker (MMB) index utilizing the Weighted Quantile Sum Regression (WQS) method. We utilized generalized linear models to estimate the change in the General Cognitive Index (GCI) per interquartile increase in the MMB index(β) and corresponding 95 % confidence intervals(CIs) in single and multipollutant models.
Results:
After adjusting for confounders in multipollutant models, MMB-cadmium (β: -1.52, 95 %CI: -3.03, -0.01) and MMB-arsenic (β: -1.53; 95 %CI: -3.02, -0.03) showed significant negative effects on intellectual functioning. In contrast, MMB-manganese (β: 2.28; 95 %CI: 0.77, 3.77), MMB-selenium (β:2.07, 95 %CI: 0.69, 3.43), and MMB-molybdenum (β: 1.76; 95 %CI: 0.21, 3.31) were the metals with the highest positive effects. We did find variations comparing results from single and multi-pollutant models, indicating the presence of multipollutant confounding.
Conclusion:
Our study adds to the current body of literature about the co-pollutant confounding problem of evaluating metals and children's intellectual functioning, as well as the effect of understudied toxic metals of public health interest, such as barium and cesium as candidates that warrant further investigation for a possible role in children's intellectual functioning.
More Related Videos
09:05Imaging Metals in Brain Tissue by Laser Ablation - Inductively Coupled Plasma - Mass Spectrometry LA-ICP-MS
Published on: January 22, 2017
04:48Setup of Capillary Electrophoresis-Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry CE-ICP-MS for Quantification of Iron Redox Species FeII, FeIII
Published on: May 4, 2020
Related Concept Videos
Environmental Influences on Intelligence
Minerals
Major...
The Periodic Table and Organismal Elements
Periodic Table Provides Information...
Biological Influences on Intelligence
Information Processing Approach
Essential Minerals for Bone Health
Calcium and Phosphorus
Calcium is a critical component of bones, especially in the form of calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate. Since the body cannot make calcium, it must be obtained from the diet. However, calcium cannot be absorbed from the small intestine without...