Determination of Mercury Daily Intake and Hair-to-Blood Mercury Concentration Ratio in People Resident of the Coast of the Persian Gulf, Iran

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to understand the mercury daily intake and hair-to-blood mercury ratio in fishermen and non-fishermen families in the coast of the Persian Gulf in Iran. The mean mercury concentration in the hair of fishermen and non-fishermen families was 5.76 and 2.27 μg/g, respectively. The mean mercury concentrations of RBCs were obtained for fishermen families and non-fishermen families: 35.96 and 17.18 μg/L, respectively. Hair mercury concentrations in 17% of people were higher than 10 μg/g, the No Observed Adverse Effects Level set by the World Health Organization. 78% of people had a blood mercury value > 5.8 μg/L, the standard level set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A significant correlation (r = 0.94, p = 0.000) was seen between log hair and RBCs mercury concentrations. The mean mercury daily intake for fishermen and non-fishermen families was 0.42 and 0.20 µg/kg BW per day, respectively. The mean mercury daily intake of fishermen families was higher than the provisional tolerable daily intake (0.23 µg/kg BW per day) suggested by the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives. Mercury daily intake significantly correlated with fish consumption (r = 0.50, p = 0.000) and log hair mercury (r = 0.88, p = 0.000). The total mean of hair-to-blood mercury concentration ratio was 306. We conclude that the use of mercury concentrations in the hair and RBCs could have been suitable biomarkers for predicting mercury exposure of people with a high rate of fish consumption.

Possible Health Assessment For Heavy Metal Concentration in Water, Sediment, and Fish Species and Pregnant Women’s Biomonitoring in Miankaleh Peninsula, Iran

“…Even small amounts of sh consumption can lead to Hg accumulation in blood (Jedrychowski, Jankowski et of heavy metals in In addition, no speci c trend was observed in the change of metals in relation to the mentioned factors. The concentration of As and Hg in the shermen families was higher than the nonshermen families like the results of Okati et al (2018). As we reported the results of heavy metals concentration in water, sediment and two sh species, it was shown that the amount of Hg was higher than the speci ed standards, especially for sediment which was much higher than the permissible standards.…”

Simple and rapid method for the determination of mercury in human hair by cold vapour generation atomic fluorescence spectrometry

“…No differences in Hg levels with age of individuals from a contaminated area in coastal Eastern Sicily in Italy [14], Lower Silesia, south-west Poland [87], and Upper Maroni, French Guiana [88] were observed. Furthermore, factors such as age, sex, and the number of dental amalgam fillings had no effect on mercury in the hair [27].…”

“…Because of the lack of data on Hg concentrations in African hair, the results of the analysis of an Eritrean population in the present study (Table 3) were compared with those of other studies conducted worldwide [27,34,36,62,78]. The average Hg level (0.21 ± 0.24 mg kg −1 ) was found comparable only with that of a Swedish population (0.26 ± 0.14 mg kg −1 ) obtained by Rodushkin and Axelsson [78] and lower than the mean levels reported in other studies: half that of Poland (0.50 ± 0.39 mg kg −1 ) measured by Chojnacka et al [62], one-third of that from Italy (0.66 ± 0.59 mg kg −1 ) measured by Domanico et al [34], one-tenth of that from Iran for non-fishing families (2.27 ± 2.10 mg kg −1 ) obtained by Okati and Esmaili-sari [27], and one-twenty-fifth that from Spain (5.38 mg kg −1 ) measured by Raposo et al [36]. These differences can be attributed to environmental and occupational exposures, hair colour, ethnic and geographical origin, and seafood consumption [26,51,87,89,90].…”

“…For Hg determination in biological samples, the most common instrumental techniques are atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) [27][28][29][30][31][32] and inductively coupled plasma-mass or optical emission spectrometry (ICP-MS or ICP-OES, respectively) [15,[33][34][35][36][37], typically coupled to cold vapour generation (CV) for matrix separation. However, memory effects can occur during the determination of total Hg by ICP-MS [38].…”

Concentration of mercury levels in saliva, milk and hair of nursing mothers in southeastern Iran

“…Minimata disease in Japan was the rst report of methylmercury contamination, acute effects, and mortality (Legrand et al, 2010). The acute and chronic effects of mercury compounds on different body systems include the central nervous system, peripheral nerves, kidney system, stillbirth, incomplete birth in pregnant women, and the effect on the newborn child through breastfeeding (Harakeh et al, 2003;Okati and Esmaili-Sari, 2018). Mercury can cross the placenta and concentrate in the fetus (USEPA, 2009).…”