The experts examined 32 jewellery workers in Dhaka and kept 22 people not connected with jewellery-making in the same area as the control group for the study.

R Goswami, biochemist of the Vivekananda Institute of Medical Science, Calcutta, B Bhattacharya of the Department of Metallurgical Engineering, Jadavpur University, S K Banerjee, professor and head of the Biochemistry Department of Calcutta University and Nuhammad Suhrab Ali, professor and chairman of Biochemistry Department of the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University of Dhaka conducted the study. Samples taken in Dhaka were tested at laboratories in Calcutta. According to the study, levels of lead in the blood of jewellery workers were up to 68.6 micrograms per 100 millilitre (ml)--three times higher than 17.9 micrograms per 100 ml of the control group.

"The levels oflipid profile (fats and various types of cholesterol) of the (jewellery) workers significantly decreased compared to the control group," says the study report. The study shows a significant increase in levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (tbars) in the jewellery workers. Tbars are responsible for lipid peroxidation that causes "damage to cell membrane and pushes people into early aging with various health hazards". All of the studied workers had anaemia.

Most jewellery workers complained of constipation, weakness, metallic taste in mouth and abdominal pain. Clinical tests showed a blue lining in the jewellery workers' gums.

"Conventional X-ray radiography of the abdomen in a few cases with acute abdominal pain showed a faint to fair radio-opaque shadow of faecal matter impregnated with lead salts," the report says. Tantibazar, a neighbourhood in Dhaka, has many jewellery workshops and a large section of population there is engaged in recovery of gold and silver from dust, smelting andalloying, rolling and milling, die-cutting and designing, assembling and soldering and polishing and plating of jewellery. During this process, lead melts, absorbing the impurities in gold and silver, and the entire working atmosphere is filled with smoke which is laden with lead and lead oxides.

The survey found that the jewellery workers put in eight to 12 hours of work a day for the last 10 to 25 years and had taken no precaution against lead fumes.