Hair lead and body lead burden in lead-intoxicated rats fed diets enriched with dietary fibre

In the factorial 23 design male Wistar rats were fed ad libitum diets supplemented with dietary fibre preparations (fruit and maize preparations; 50 and 150 g/kg diet) and intoxicated with lead acetate per os (200 and 400 mgPb/kg diet) for 5 weeks. At the end of the study, rats were anaesthetised and hair, liver, kidney, spleen, and femoral bone were dissected for chemical analysis. It was found that: quantity of fibre in the diet significantly affected inner organ and tissue lead contents in the rats. Dietary lead levels influenced all analysed tissue and organ lead contents and the total body retention of lead in the rats. Positive correlations were found between hair lead and inner organs lead (r = 0.35) and bone lead (r = 0.35), and total body lead burden lead (r = 0.40). This paper was presented in the 19th Workshop "Mengen - und Spurenelemente", Jena, Germany, December 3-4, 1999.