Reader Comments

Post a new comment on this article

Minor correction

Posted by rfry on 09 Aug 2012 at 17:48 GMT

Descriptive statistics of metal levels are presented in Table 2.
http://plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0031354#article1.body1.sec3.p2

Minor corrections to Tables 2-5 in the article are required because two individual data points for lead were discovered to have been transcribed incorrectly. The overall findings for lead remain unchanged and did not affect any arsenic, cadmium, or mercury findings. The following three changes should be noted in the text:
Notably, the maximum detectable lead level is 5.61 ug/dL. The data show that one NC mother (0.47%) had blood levels above 5.0 ug/dL (the CDC lead advisory level for pregnant women). Similarly, three (1.4%) women had lead levels above the NHANES IV 95^th percentile. Finally, the average maternal lead levels in County C remain with the highest geometric mean levels, now reported as 1.22 ug/dL and these levels remain statistically significantly different when compared to three other counties (A, E, and F).

Additional revised lead data are:

Table 2- Pb geometric mean (range) 0.885 (0.23-5.61),

Table 3 - Spearman correlations for Pb and As=0.13, Pb and Cd=0.06, Pb and Hg=0.20*,

Table 4 – Beta values and 95% CI for Pb by race: Asian= -0.01 (-0.22-0.21), Hispanic= -0.04 (-0.16-0.09), NHB= -0.06 (-0.12-0.00),

Table 5 – Geometric mean Pb levels for County A=0.71, County C=1.22, Total=0.88. All originally reported statistically significant relationships hold true.

No competing interests declared.