Pixe Analysis of Hair in Arsenic Pollution, Bangladesh

Abstract

The groundwater pollution by arsenic in Bangladesh causes a serious problem for millions of people who are exposed to poisoning by this toxic element. In an attempt to evaluate the extent of arsenic poisoning, hair samples of people living in Pabna district were collected. The hair samples were analyzed using Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) through exciting the atoms of a specimen so that their intensities can be converted into elemental concentrations in the specimen. The elements present in the specimen are identified by the corresponding X-ray energies and their concentrations are deduced from the X-ray intensities. The results from hair samples indicate substantially higher level of arsenic than those demarcated as toxic levels, in people from member families both affected and non-affected by poisoning. We correlate it with exceedingly high arsenic concentration in drinking water far above the permissible limit. The analytical results are compared with the results of arsenic and other elemental analysis of 160 Bangladeshi hair samples with that of 250 Japanese samples. The results show markedly higher levels of arsenic, manganese, iron and lead where the latter three elements show a positive relation with arsenic in the case of Bangladeshi as compared to the samples from Japan. On the other hand, selenium concentrations show very low level in the Bangladeshi samples compared to Japanese, displaying an inverse relationship with arsenic. The mechanism of arsenic in relation to other elements in the human body needs further investigation. The preliminary results call for detailed experimental and epidemiological studies to further characterize these aspects.

Quantitative analysis with a two-detector measuring system in in-air PIXE-design to improve detection sensitivity at low energies

“…[2][3][4][5] Some efforts have been made to develop cultivating methods which enable the people to grow farm products with low toxic elements in the edible portion in spite of using contaminated waters. We developed the method of quantitative analysis of living plants 6 on the basis of a standard-free method.…”

Standard-Free Method for Hair Samples in in-Air Pixe

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] It allows us to quantitatively analyze samples of extremely small quantity, and it has been confirmed to be quite useful for studies not only on human exposure to toxic elements but also on required intakes of essential elements. [8][9][10] It also enables us to quantitatively analyze untreated samples. Not only it saves labor in target preparation so much but also it eliminates ambiguous factors in complicated sample preparation procedure, such as contamination of the sample and elemental loss from the sample.…”

“…Especially, the standard-free method for untreated hairs has been widely used by several international research projects for investigating human exposure to toxic elements. 8,9 In Asia, they say that more than 100 million people are now showing toxic symptoms caused by usual intakes of various toxic elements such as arsenic, mercury, fluorine, cadmium and lead. More than two thousand hairs have been analyzed a year at our laboratory NMCC (Nishina Memorial Cyclotron Center), and a number of hair samples has continuously been increasing in these years.…”