QUESTION: Could you develop a fact sheet on Lead and Cancer? 04 Nov 2008 District of Columbia, USA

I was looking for a fact sheet on lead and cancer, and could not find one. If you have one, could you send it to me? If you don't, could you develop one and send it to me?

Thank you,

Steven

ANSWER: 04 Nov 2008

Dear Dr Lamm,

I believe that the best two places where information linking lead and cancer  has been assembled are as follows:

"IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans: Inorganic and organic lead compounds" by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Volume 87 (2006) Working Group of 20 experts from 11 countries. Within that monograph, the closest thing to a factsheet is a 9-page "Summary of Data Reported and Evaluation"

"Toxicological Profile for Lead" by Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), US, (August, 2007) [582 pp] Specifically, pages 151-155 [pages 171/582 -175/582] in the Profile are about Cancer.

I will ask members of our Technical Advisory Board and also members of the Centers for Disease Control's Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology and Surveillance (ABLES) mailing list whether they know of any fact sheets on the topic before embarking on the difficult process of finding an expert who is willing to write one for us for free.

We have insufficient funding to commission writers and as the only paid staff member, my priority task is to answer about 6,000 enquiries like yours per annum, and I rarely find time to write all the fact sheets we need. But thankyou for the suggestion!

I hope this helps

Yours Sincerely

Elizabeth O’Brien