Blood lead levels in children in urban and rural areas: Using multilevel modeling to investigate impacts of gender, race, poverty, and the environment

Highlights: • BLL differences in individual and block group variables for urban and rural areas • Rural children had greater percent increase in BLL as children age from < 1 to 2 years. • Percent roads and home age associated with increased BLL in urban but not rural areas -- Abstract: Many studies of children's exposure to lead (Pb) are carried out in urban and industrialized environments. This study analyzed blood lead level (BLL) data collected from 2011 to 2016 from approximately 140,000 children ages < 1 to 6 years across South Carolina (SC), including urban and rural areas. Individual-level characteristics included children's age, and race/ethnicity. Block group variables examined included population by race and ethnicity, households below the poverty level, median year homes built, urban/rural classification, and percent road coverage. BLL were higher in urban compared to rural children but increased to a greater extent in rural children from age < 1 year to 2 years. Road coverage was strongly associated with higher BLL in urban areas, and with home age more weakly, but neither road coverage nor home age was associated with BLL in rural areas. Young urban children may receive greater exposure to Pb from house dust and outdoor legacy Pb contamination, and young rural children through diet and drinking water. Black children had higher BLL in urban areas than white children, and the converse was true in rural areas. Population data indicated that rural areas had more poverty than urban areas, but strong associations between increased children's BLL and either ethnicity or socio-economic status (SES) at the block group level was not observed, likely due to distinct characteristics of poverty and geographic distribution by ethnicity in urban as compared to rural areas of SC. Individual demographics and environmental characteristics may be more closely associated with BLL than geographically aggregated SES and race/ethnicity characteristics. Interventions to reduce children's exposure to Pb should occur at as early an age as possible, and differences between rural and urban areas should be considered as interventions are developed to reduce children's BLL.