الفهرس 
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Abstract
This work aimed at studying the neurobehavioral effects among workers in printing industry in Menoufiya Governorate, studying the relationship between these neurobehavioral effects and clinical and laboratory findings related to exposure and other confounding factors and assessment of the work environment. Interviewing personal, occupational, family, past medical and reproductive histories in addition to clinical medical and neurological examinations, psychometric assessment and laboratory investigation of urine and blood samples were carried out for one hundred male workers occupationally exposed to lead. Fifty subjects (never occupationally exposed to lead) working in administrative departments in faculty of Arts (Menoufiya University) were taken as a control group and matched for age, sex, socioeconomic status and education level. Moreover, the workplace was assessed by measuring the concentration of lead in the working environmental to which all studied subjects were exposed in different sites and the mean levels were calculated.It was clear that the concentration of environmental lead in working environment was obviously lower than the TLV recommended by ASTDR (2001) (being 0.05 mg/m3), was significantly higher than that of controls environment (P<0.05), which consequently reflects its impact on the significant higher BLL among the former than that among the latter (P<0.001.No significant difference was observed between lead exposed workers and controls regarding personal characteristics (p>0.05) so, any difference between the two groups could be, consequently, attributed to lead effect. Exposure to lead in the studied printing office was associated with higher prevalence of reported clinical manifestations including general clinical, GIT, neurological, renal and gynecological manifestations than controls (P<0.05).. .Among lead exposed workers, an association was observed between the presences of different studied clinical manifestations and higher mean BLL where the neurological ones were at the utmost significant level (P<0.05). .An association was observed between either mean value of BLL and urinary ALA with the studied blood parameters reaching significant fall of the mean values of Hb level and significant increase of mean value of urea, creatinine, uric acid and urinary ALA with the former (P<0.001) and significant fall of the mean value of Hb level with the latter (P<0.05). It was clear that exposure to lead, specially after adjusting for age, duration of employment and education level was associated with poor performance of cognitive NBTB for intelligence, psychomotor, perception, calculation, short term memory, vocabulary, spatial relation, concept shifting and coding; and high scores of EPQ scales (P<0.05)Also, short term exposure to lead (as denoted by BLL) as well as long term remote exposure (as denoted by urinary ALA) were associated with poor performance of cognitive NBTB for intelligence, psychomotor, perception, calculation, short term memory, vocabulary, spatial relation, concept shifting and coding; and high scores of EPQ scales (P<0.05). <Inspite of the apparent negative correlation of BLL and antioxidants, the latter have no significant correlation with the performance of NBTB. The reported poor performance is most probably due to direct and or enzymatic effect of lead exposure rather than indirect effect through its action on antioxidants. This supposition needs further investigations to clarify the exact mechanismAging beside lead exposure, specially after adjusting for duration of employment and education level, resulted in poor performance of cognitive NBTB for intelligence, psychomotor, perception, calculation, short term memory, vocabulary, spatial relation, concept shifting and coding; and high scores of EPQ scales (P<0.05).
The impact of duration of employment may be added to that of lead exposure in lowering the cognitive NBTB performance for intelligence, psychomotor, perception, calculation, short term memory, vocabulary, spatial relation, concept shifting and coding; and increasing the scores of EPQ scales, specially after adjusting for age and education level (P<0.05).
The effect of education levels beside that of lead exposure can result in poor performance of cognitive NBTB for intelligence, psychomotor, perception, calculation, short term memory, vocabulary, spatial relation, concept shifting and coding; and high scores of EPQ scales specially after adjusting for age and duration of employment (P<0.05).