| Summary: | 博士 === 國立陽明大學 === 環境與職業衛生研究所 === 99 === Background:
In 1981, a petrol-lead phase-out program (PLPOP) was launched in Taiwan for the abatement of environmental lead emissions. Until now, the implement scenarios were almost 30 years. Additionally, Taiwan is an island country and hence is usually not affected by other lead contamination sources from neighbor countries. It provided us an opportunity to study the long-term effect associated with the reduction of environmental lead exposure on the development of important diseases.
We also started to further explore the impact of this decline in environmental lead in the field. With the growing immigrant population in Taiwan, most immigrant women arrive in Taiwan from resource-limited countries, which may not have strict environmental policies. We studied that the changes of blood lead levels (BLLs) in immigrants after migration to understand the effect of lead prevention and control strategy in Taiwan.
Objectives:
Our objectives were (1) to examine whether the reduction of environmental lead emissions would result in the decrease in mortality rates of various diseases and brain cancer incidence based on national data between 1981 and 2007; (2) to explored differences between immigrant women and native women in BLLs, and to identify that the resettlement time was a determinant of decrease in blood metals levels among immigrants.
Results and Conclusions:
By taking the confounders including economic growth rate, per capita income, tobacco consumption, and medical resources into account, the decreases in age-standardized mortality rates for all causes, cerebrovascular disease, and nephrosis were found to be highly correlated with the decrease in petrol lead emissions (p-values= 0.001, <0.001, 0.020, respectively). According to lead emission and lead emission multiplying population density of Taiwan's 22 counties and cities, we used quartation to class as the high, median, low, tiny lead emissions area. The age-standardized incidence rates for brain cancer significantly were shown to be highly correlated with the high and median lead emission area compared to tiny lead emission area. Our results show that a good plan for national control of petrol lead emission is important to the improvement of the individual and national health quality.
In the field study, our study suggested that the blood lead measurements in Taiwan were lower than in the immigrants’ country of origin. After considering metal-related genetic variation that originated differs by race, we also confirm duration of residence is an important determinant in the change of blood metal levels after immigration. This result also confirmed the benefit of lead prevention and control strategy in Taiwan.
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