A Study of Hair Mercury Concentration Level in Japanese

Abstract

Recently, increase in global concentrations of mercury has become the current topics of the world. Human hair is a good indicator of mercury exposure and there has been a good correlation between the environmental pollution of mercury and the mercury concentration of hair. At present, the criterion of hair mercury as a indicator for mercury environmental pollution has been employed the mean value 6.02 ppm (n=73) of 30 years ago, i. e. the times of the mercury pollution. This mean value is commonly considered unsuitable for the present environment. The purpose of this investigation was to estimate the normal level of the present hair mercury concentrations in people who are healthy and sick persons. Mercury in hair samples were determined by gold amalgam and cold flameless atomic absorption spectrometry Here we present measurements of total hair mercury for healthy people, which show that males (n=67, mean 3.72 ppm) had a higher concentration than females (n=189 , mean 2.05 ppm) and hair mercury mean value as normal level was 2.49 ppm (n=256) On the other hand, the mercury concentrations (n=57 mean 5.9 ppm) in hair of sick persons (dementia) was at maximum 36.5 ppm and clearly about three times higher tban the corresponding value from normal level.