ヒゲを用いた生体中水銀量の評価

概要

論文の詳細を見る
In order to estimate human exposure to mercury, we must survey mercury intake from meals, especially from sea foods, as well as the total amount of mercury currently in the body. The information obtained by conventional analysis of hair samples is limited to mercury content accumulated for the past year within the body.Accordingly, we tried to estimate the current mercury accumulation in the body from the mustache, a little of which can be sampled every day. Total mercury in about 5mg of mustache was determined by the furnace combustion, gold amalgamation and gas phase detection techniques which we devised to get high sensitivity to mercury. The recovery of 5ng of mercury was not lower than 98%, and each examination was finished within 4 minutes. When we applied the technique to mustache samples obtained from 7 adults, the total mercury contents were 1-4μg/g with a daily variation of 10%. The intake of 100g of tuna meat resulted in a significant growth in the level of the total mercury concentration in the mustache sampled on the seventh to tenth days after the intake. This phenomenon suggests that we may be able to estimate the date on which mercury-containing meals are taken.