On Monday, American researchers revealed that even very tiny amounts of the metal lead, which is currently commonly found in the blood of US youngsters, could end up damaging their kidneys.

Researchers found evidence of early kidney damage in children who have much lower levels of lead in their blood, than traditionally considered dangerous, and stressed that this could easily result in kidney diseases later in life.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that very low levels of lead may impact kidney function in healthy children, which underscores the need to minimize sources of lead exposure", wrote study leader Dr. Jeffrey Fadrowski of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Despite the fact that sources of lead across the US have been drastically pulled back, the metal could still be causing damage to the health of some people who are continually exposed to it in some form or the other.

Details of the research, which studied data collected from 769 young adults between the ages of 12 to 20, who took part in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1988 to 1994, have been published in Archives of Internal Medicine.