The spot urine samples were collected in polypropylene tubes
and were kept in a cooler at +4 C and then stored in the lab at
20 C until analysis. The Jaffé method was used to assess urinary
creatinine (Paschal et al., 2000). BCd and UCd concentrations were
measured by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry
(GFAAS) using a standard method (Jin et al., 2002). The limit of
detection (LoD) for BCd and UCd was 1.0 lg l1.