Abstract:To study the associations between bone mineral density (BMD) and urinary cadmium as well as urinary lead on farmers lived in a non-polluted area of Kaiping, Guangdong Province, China. Methods 283 local healthy residents were investigated who lived in rural Kaiping for more than 15 years, aged 30-80, and mainly lived on local rice and vegetables. Blood and urine specimens were collected for detection of urinary cadmium, lead, phosphorus and calcium by ICP-MS and corrected by urinary creatinine. Furthermore, the bone mineral density (BMD) of far end of the left forearm was determined by Dual Energy X-ray Absorptionmetry (DTX-200), the values of BMD were Z scored. One-way ANOVA, chi-square and the multivariate regression analysis were used to investigate the relationship between BMD and urinary cadmium as well as urinary lead. Results Spearman correlation analysis showed that there was a positive correlation between BMD and U-Cd in both males and females, and the correlation coefficients were -0.21 and -0.22 respectively. No correlation was observed between BMD and U-Pb in both males and females. For males, the BMDs were different under five different U-Cd levels, however, the proportion of each T-SD levels were similar. For females, the BMDs under different U-Cd levels were the same, otherwise, the proportion of each T-SD levels were distinct. With increment of U-Cd level, the proportion of osteopenia and osteoprosis increased, the correlation coefficient was 0.22. Multivariate regression analysis implied that the BMD was associated with age and weight for females and with age and BMI for males. Conclusion There were simple correlations between BMD and U-Cd, however, no linear relationship was observed. Further study is needed to understand the effects of cadmium and lead exposure to bone mineral density for population lived in non-polluted area.