Chemical Investigation on Inorganic Elements in Human Hairs

(2) Concentrations of 23 elements in hairs of foreigners

Abstract

Hair samples of from 0.2 to 5.0kg, each a mixture of hair taken from forty to one thousand persons (if 5g of hair is equivalent to the hair from one person), were collected from the barber shops and beauty salons in the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand, the Philippines, Mexico and Japan, and the concentrations of 23 chemical elements were simultaneously determined by the emission spectrographic method. The following results were obtained:
(1) High concentrations of Fe, Sn, Ni and Bi were found in dark reddish-brown female hair collected from the Philippines, Mn in black hair from Japan and Mexico, and Ag in male hair from New Zealand (Table 2). While, lower concentration of many elements were found in grey or white hair from Hawaii and Great Britain. In addition, significant differences between the concentrations of many elements for hair subjects from Mexico and Japan, in spite of the hair being the same black colour, were noticed.
(2) In the case of Maxican chromium workers, markedly high concentrations of Cr were recorded for their hair, i. e. the Cr content (67±65ppm, n=21) in male workers was approximately 37 times higher than that for normal subjects (1.8±0.33ppm, n=6), and similarly almost seven times greater (9.5± 5.4ppm, n=3) in female workers than normal persons (1.4±0.75ppm, n=16) (Table 3 and Fig. 1).