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Retested for Xenobiotic Heavy Metals: Trend Appears to be Down
re: heavy metals
If I were a parent with young children or expecting wife, I’d want my kids tested for heavy metals. There are just too many sketchy food sources out there. Ditto for glyphosate in food and other things. BTW, organic food doesn’t mean shit when it comes to heavy metals.
Below, different lab than before, but hopefully it really does mean that my blood lead level has declined from 14.6 to 8.4 mcg/dL in about 8 weeks. Some assurance of the accuracy might come from the “verified by repeat analysis” note. That’s still about 10X higher than “typical”, which is ~0.8 mcg/dL, with a reasonably low level about ~2 mcg/dL.
In theory, blood lead level has a half life of one month. Barring new exposures, a figure closer to 4 would have been expected (14.6 / 2 / 2 = 3.65)—so it’s about twice what half life would imply. Which implies some level of exposure continues.
However, I had not eliminated my #1 suspect for lead contamination from my diet over most of that time (being unware), and I continue to drink black tea and green tea (perhaps unwisely).
Retesting in 2 months is appropriate.
UPDATE April 5 2023: as shown below, Pb came down from 8.4 to 6.1 in another 6 weeks. That’s only a 25% reduction. A half life of one month would predict more like a 65% reduction. That might mean continuing exposure, presumably ingestion. Mercury (Hg) declined from 9.9 to 6.9, a 305 reduction.
Mercury
Arsenic (Ar) looks fine. Good thing I am not a rice or grain eater.
My blood level of Mercury (Hg) is on the higher side at 9.9 mcg/L = 0.99 mcg/dL = 9.9 ng/mL. Guidelines vary, but 10 mcg/L = 1 mcg/dL = 10 ng/mL is the rough cutoff for initial concern and I’m right at that. Half that figure would be bettr. The CDC states that “Defining safe levels of mercury in blood continues to be an active research area” and “blood and urine mercury levels tend to increase with age”*.
* Especially if one plays with mercury as a teenager, as I did, though I mostly avoided direct contact. Fun to see pennies float on it!
