TY - JOUR
T1 - Pre-cleaning of hair is not beneficial in LA-ICPMS studies of chronic metal exposure
AU - David, Gwendolyn K.
AU - Hunter, Andrew H.
AU - Moromizato, Karine H.
AU - Allen, Charlotte M.
AU - Wheatley, Rebecca
AU - von Hippel, Frank A.
AU - Niehaus, Amanda C.
AU - Wilson, Robbie S.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was funded by the local Indigenous Land Council. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank the local Indigenous Land & Sea Rangers for their logistical and informative support. We would like to acknowledge Dr Peter Hines of QUT for the HIM images.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 David et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2023/8
Y1 - 2023/8
N2 - Chronic exposure to toxic metals is a serious global health concern. However, population-wide biomonitoring is costly and carries several sampling constraints. Though hair sampling can be a useful way to assess environmental exposure, external contamination is a longstanding concern, and a pre-cleaning step prior to metal quantification has long been recommended despite a lack of evidence for its efficacy. In this study, we quantified the spatial distribution of 16 elements in unwashed human hair samples using Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), then tested how two common pre-cleaning treatments (Triton-ethanol, Triton-nitric acid) affected metal content in external and interior layers of hair using LA-ICP-MS. We show that elements differ in their spatial distribution across hair and that pre-cleaning is not consistent in its effect on element concentrations and decreases interior concentrations of some elements. We demonstrate that differences among individuals can be quantified reliably with LA-ICP-MS analysis of interior concentrations of unwashed hair. Our study tests the widespread notion that pre-cleaning is essential in analyses of hair for environmental exposure to metals, and examines the benefits of a unified approach to analysis of metals in hair using LA-ICP-MS.
AB - Chronic exposure to toxic metals is a serious global health concern. However, population-wide biomonitoring is costly and carries several sampling constraints. Though hair sampling can be a useful way to assess environmental exposure, external contamination is a longstanding concern, and a pre-cleaning step prior to metal quantification has long been recommended despite a lack of evidence for its efficacy. In this study, we quantified the spatial distribution of 16 elements in unwashed human hair samples using Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), then tested how two common pre-cleaning treatments (Triton-ethanol, Triton-nitric acid) affected metal content in external and interior layers of hair using LA-ICP-MS. We show that elements differ in their spatial distribution across hair and that pre-cleaning is not consistent in its effect on element concentrations and decreases interior concentrations of some elements. We demonstrate that differences among individuals can be quantified reliably with LA-ICP-MS analysis of interior concentrations of unwashed hair. Our study tests the widespread notion that pre-cleaning is essential in analyses of hair for environmental exposure to metals, and examines the benefits of a unified approach to analysis of metals in hair using LA-ICP-MS.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0289635
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0289635
M3 - Article
C2 - 37561705
AN - SCOPUS:85167666089
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 8 AUGUST
M1 - e0289635
ER -