A Critique: Recent Epi Studies of Motor Skills and Manganese
In "Risk Assessment of an Essential Element: Manganese" Annette Santamaria and Sandra Sulsky of ENVIRON critically review recent epidemiological literature associating a variety of abnormal psychometrics with relatively low levels of manganese exposure.
The authors conclude that the available epidemiological data is generally flawed and unreliable at least for the purpose of doing risk assessment. Furthermore, they demonstrate that some exposure levels claimed to pose a risk of neurobehavioral injury produce effective doses well below the amount of manganese recommended in a healthy diet; they also elaborate on the adverse health effects of manganese deficiency. Santamaria and Sulsky conclude by suggesting that more accurate and defensible risk assessments for manganese will have to come from objective data such as the determination of manganese dose via inhalation and the subsequent development of physiologically based pharmacokinetic models to predict the consequences of exposure at various levels and by various routes.
