Studies on the Correlation between Hair and Tissue Concentration of Mercury in Mice

Abstract

Recently, the use of human head hair has become of interest as one of the biological indicators of enviromental pollution. Though hair is easily collected and multi-element analysis of hair is easily carried out by applying instrumental neutron activation analysis, it is not always clear how the trace element contents in hair represent those in organs, and there are a number of unclarified points regarding the correlation between them. As one of the first steps in approaching the problems, the authors made a survey on the mercury movement in body hair and in tissues of mice and obtained the correlation coefficients between them, by using ²⁰³Hg tracer in HgCl₂. The maximum concentration of mercury was obtained in kidney and the minimum value in blood. The mercury concentration in body hair tended to be higher than that in every tissue except kidney. The correlation coefficient between the concentrations in body hair and tissues were 0.864 in kidney, 0.869 in liver, 0.843 in lung, 0.933 in brain, 0.883 in spleen, 0.892 in intestine, 0.890 in thighbone and 0.839 in blood, and a significant correlation was observed between the mercury concentration in hair and in every tissue. By applying the compartmental analysis to the data obtained, the difference of turnover characteristics was examined between body hair and every tissue. Further, the regression equation was introduced to calculate the mercury concentration in every tissue from that in body hair.