Screening Children Exposed to Lead: an Assessment of the Capillary Blood Lead Fingerstick Test

We describe results of a 3-year study in which 499 paired venous and capillary blood specimens, collected by fingerstick on the same day, were analyzed for lead (BPb) and erythrocyte protoporphyrin (EP). False-positive rates (FPRs) and the proportion of false positives were calculated at four BPb thresholds. At the 100 microg/L threshold, the FPR for all data was 13%, but the proportion of false positives was only 5%. The log ratios of capillary-to-venous BPb data indicate that, with the exception of eight outliers, two subpopulations exist that follow a log-normal distribution. These two subpopulations, the "core" (n = 303) and "shifted" (n = 188) groups, on average generated a positive bias at 100 microg/L BPb of 8.6% and 30.3%, respectively. The log ratios of capillary-to-venous EP data followed a normal distribution, indicating that capillary EP is not statistically different from venous EP.