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The second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES II) incorporated medical history, physical examination, anthropometric measurements, dietary recall and food frequency, laboratory tests and x rays. Blood leads (PbB) were 5-35 μg/dl. In multiple weighted linear regressions of adjusted data from 2695 children 6 mos-7 yrs, 91%. of the variance in height, 72%. of the variance in weight and 58%. of the variance in chest circumference were explained by five variables: age or (age) 2, race, sex, PbB, total calories or protein and hematocrit or transferrin saturation. The coefficients remained stable after correction for collinearity. A difference in PbB of 10 μg/dl predicted a 1.2 cm difference in height. Variables that did not significantly improve the models predicting growth included family income, degree of urbanization, serum albumin, copper, iron and zinc, dietary carbohydrate, fat, calcium, potassium …