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. 2025 Aug 10;47(9):368.
doi: 10.1007/s10653-025-02687-3.

Lead exposure in Bihar, Eastern India: a risk assessment study

Nirmal Kumar Chayal  1   2 , Arun Kumar  3 , Kumar Sambhav Verma  2 , Dhruv Kumar  4 , Radhika Agarwal  5 , Kanhaiya Kumar  1 , Tejasvi Pandey  5 , Mohammad Ali  1 , Abhinav Srivastava  1 , Ashok Kumar Ghosh  1
Affiliations

Lead exposure in Bihar, Eastern India: a risk assessment study

Nirmal Kumar Chayal et al. Environ Geochem Health. .

Abstract

An estimated 800 million people globally are reported to be suffering from lead poisoning. In India, lead exposure has affected many states such as Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. The current research study has been conducted in various districts for Bihar such as Patna, Vaishali, Saran, Nalanda, Buxar and Bhojpur for the first time to estimate the lead exposure levels in subjects. The study was conducted on n = 282 lactating mothers and their breastfed infants. In the studied n = 282 lactating mother's blood samples, 94% had lead contamination higher than the WHO permissible limit of 50 µg/L. In the lactating mother's urine samples, 90% had lead contamination higher than the WHO permissible limit of 50 µg/L. Similarly, in the child's urine study, 41% had lead contamination higher than the WHO permissible limit of 50 µg/L. However, the analysed household handpump water also had lead contamination in 6% of the water sources more than the WHO permissible limit of 10 µg/L, while 94% of water sources had safer levels. This indicates that the source of lead contamination in biological samples of the studied subjects was mildly due to lead contaminated water. Hence, food, vegetables, animal milk or animal meat could be the source of lead contamination in the exposed subjects. Moreover, this could also be due to the use of local market turmeric, use of ayurvedic medicines, cosmetic - whitening creams by the exposed subjects. The long-term exposure to lead has caused non-carcinogenic HQ higher values i.e. > 1 in child and their mothers. Hence, the current study concludes that significant amount of lead contamination was observed in the exposed population's biological samples. The exposed lactating mother's breastfed infants are at high risk of developing neurological disorders which could cause severe health risk to them. The study recommends the state Government to take preventive measures to control the lead poisoning within the exposed community of Bihar (India).

Keywords: Child health risk assessment; Gangetic plains of Bihar; HQ; Lactating mothers; Lead poisoning.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflict of interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethics approval: The Institutional Ethics Committee of the Indian Council of Medical Research Unit- Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences (MoU for Ethics approval), Patna, Bihar, India, approved the entire research work. The ethical clearance was granted with IEC Letter No. RMRI/EC/24/2020 dated September 26, 2020. Prior to commencing the investigation, all patients were provided with a comprehensive explanation of the study's objectives, and their informed consent was duly acquired by their written consent. The study was conducted in compliance with the ethical rules for research involving human subjects set by the Indian Council of Medical Research, Government of India, as well as the ethical principles defined in the Declaration of Helsinki. Consent to participate: For any of the clarification related to the publication of the article, the authors provide the consent. Consent for publication: Not applicable.

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