Water Manganese Exposure and Children’s Intellectual Function in Araihazar, Bangladesh

By G. Wasserman, Xinhua Liu, F. Parvez, H. Ahsan, Diane Levy, P. Factor-Litvak, J. Kline, A. van Geen, V. Slavkovich, N. LoIacono and 3 more. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2004

981 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Exposure to manganese via inhalation has long been known to elicit neurotoxicity in adults, but little is known about possible consequences of exposure via drinking water. In this study, we report results of a cross-sectional investigation of intellectual function in 142 10-year-old children in Araihazar, Bangladesh, who had been consuming tube-well water with an average concentration of 793 μg Mn/L and 3 μg arsenic/L. Children and mothers came to our field clinic, where children received a medical examination in which weight, height, and head circumference were measured. Children’s intellectual function was assessed on tests drawn from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, version III, by summing weighted items across domains to create Verbal, Performance, and Full-Scale raw scores. Children provided urine specimens for measuring urinary As and creatinine and were asked to provide blood samples for measuring blood lead, As, Mn, and hemoglobin concentrations. After adjustment for sociodemographic covariates, water Mn was associated with reduced Full-Scale, Performance, and Verbal raw scores, in a dose–response fashion; the low level of As in water had no effect. In the United States, roughly 6% of domestic household wells have Mn concentrations that exceed 300 μg Mn/L, the current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lifetime health advisory level. We conclude that in both Bangladesh and the United States, some children are at risk for Mn-induced neurotoxicity.

Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Pollution

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Citations in the corpus

The Broad Scope of Health Effects from Chronic Arsenic Exposure: Update on a Worldwide Public Health Problem (2013, background): “…neurological impairments are evident in children and adults who exhibit impaired cognitive abilities and motor functions after arsenic exposure (Chen Y et al. 2009; Dong and Su 2009; Gong et al. 2011; Hamadani et al. 2011; Parvez et al. 2011; Vahidnia et al. 2007; Wasserman et al. 2004, 2007).”
Intellectual Impairment in School-Age Children Exposed to Manganese from Drinking Water (2010, background): “1994) and 800 μg/L (Wasserman et al. 2006).”
Arsenic exposure and toxicology: a historical perspective. (2011, result): “…spontaneous abortion and stillbirth (von Ehrenstein et al., 2006), decreased birth weight (Rahman et al., 2009), and decrements in intellectual testing in school-aged children (von Ehrenstein et al., 2007; Wasserman et al., 2004, 2007), although results were inconsistent and require further study.”