Lead in Albacore: Guide to Lead Pollution in Americans

Abstract

Lead contamination in canned tuna, exceeding natural concentrations 10,000-fold, went undiscovered for decades because of analytical error. The magnitude of this pollution effects helps explain the difference between the lead concentration in the diets of present-day. Americans (0.2 part per million) and in the diets of prehistoric peoples (estimated to be less than 0.002 part per million). It also explain how skeletal concentrations of lead in typical Americans became elevated 500-fold above the natural concentrations measured in bones of Peruvian's who lived in a unpolluted environment 1800 years ago. It has been tacitly assumed that natural biochemical effects of lead in human cells have been studied, but this is not so because reagents, nutrients, and controls used in laboratory and field studies have been unknowingly contaminated with lead far in excess of naturally occurring levels. An unrecognized form of poisoning caused by this excessive exposure to lead may affect most Americans because magnitudes of biochemical dysfunctions are proportional to degrees of exposure.