Occupational Exposure to Cobalt and Nickel: Biological Monitoring

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Abstract
Cobalt and nickel are industrially important metals which bear the risk of occupational cancer. In the health surveillance of workers biological monitoring provides a helpful means. For urine, we apply a complexation and extraction of the metals in an organic solvent with subsequent ETAAS determination. Clean-up and enrichment steps result in sensitive procedures whose accuracy has been proven, e.g. by voltammetry. Metal excretions of occupationally unexposed persons have been measured (Ni, n=123; m= 0.6 μg/L; 95%n=123; m= 0.07 μg/L; 95%3 which led to mean cobalt levels in whole blood between 4.9 and 47.9 μg/L and 18.9 and 438.4 μg/L urine, respectively. Between the individual blood (x) and urine levels (y) a significant linear correlation could be established (r= 0.862; y= 7.52x–11.2). In whole blood specimens, cobalt was bound not only to serum proteins but also to hemoglobin. A second study was performed for 103 stainless steel welders. The external nickel exposure did not exceed two-thirds of the German Technical Guiding Concentration of 500 μg/m3. The median nickel levels in body fluids were 3.9 μg/L (plasma) and 10.2 μg/L, respectively (urine). In none of the isolated individual erythrocyte fractions could nickel be quantified.

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