Conclusions
This study demonstrated that a considerable large proportion of inhalable and fine lead dust is generated from a lead acid factory entering the neighboring environments, even though bag filter is technically used in the production process in this factory. Atmospheric dispersion and deposition are the major transport pathways. The lead levels found in concentrations of soils and tree leaves in the polluted area were much higher than found in the clean reference area. However, lead levels found in circumjacent soil and underground water were lower than the recommended national standard values of China and no obvious lead pollution problem was observed in rice and vegetables growing in the polluted area. Ingestion of lead-contained dust was one of the major human exposure pathways, while the contribution of diet was relatively insignificant.
Our preliminary results from this study demonstrated that lead-acid battery production has caused severe environmental pollution problems and raised damaging public health issues. To our knowledge, there are about 2000 lead acid battery factories operating in China. Their environmental hazards still remain unknown. Due to the absence of health-related studies in these areas, urgent studies are needed to assess the adverse effects of lead exposure. Studies are being designed in our next step to further investigate the environmental and public health impacts from lead-acid battery factories. We expect that our results will become an important reference for environmental policy making and technological improvement for factory manufacturing processes.