The correspondence between U.K. ‘action levels’ for lead in blood and in water

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Abstract
This paper considers whether the Department of the Environment's water lead concentration criterion for lead pipe replacement and action in individual cases, i.e. 50 μg/1 in any sample, is too high when set against the Department of Health's advisory action limit for blood lead concentration of 25 μg/100 ml. The relationships between blood lead and water lead concentrations found in the Glasgow and Ayr duplicate diet studies, together with unpublished data from Glasgow and Liverpool, indicate that over 10% of people exposed to an average water lead concentration of 100 μg/l (the earlier action level) would have blood lead concentrations above 25 μg/100 ml, as would about 4% of those exposed to 50 μg/1 (the Maximum Admissible Concentration in an EEC Directive). For adults, average water lead concentrations should not exceed 30 μg/1 to ensure compliance with the limit for blood lead, i.e. so that not more than 2% exceed 25μg/100 ml. However, for one of the critical groups, bottle‐fed infants (whose diet is 90% water), average water lead concentrations should not exceed 10–15 μg/1. The WHO‘S Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI) for children (25μg/kg body weight) also implies that their water lead concentrations should not exceed 10–15 μg/1.

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