Recently, researchers from Macquarie University in Australia conducted the first ever meta-analysis of Indian blood lead levels. They found that the burden of disease was significantly larger than previously calculated. The high levels of lead contamination in the blood of children have a significant impact in lowering their IQ and increasing the risk of other diseases. The research estimated the disease burden in IQ decrement and Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) with pooled mean blood lead level from data published between 2010 to 2018.
The DALY is a measure of overall disease burden which is expressed as the number of years lost due to ill health, disability, and early death. Previous studies have estimated nearly 4.6 million lead-attributed DALYs with 165,000 deaths. The new study found that the total could be as high as 4.9 million DALYs as a result of the high blood lead…
