Determination of chemical forms of mercury in human hair by acid leaching and atomic absorption spectrometry

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Abstract
A simple method for the determination of sub-microgram amounts of mercury species in human hair is described. The method is based on the selective leaching of methylmercury from hair with hydrochloric acid followed by determination of the separated mercury species using cold vapour atomic absorption spectrometry. The results obtained by the proposed method are compared with results obtained by the solvent extraction method. Both methods gave the same results and are suitable for the determination of methylmercury and inorganic mercury in hair with natural (10–100 ng g–1) or higher contents of mercury with precision higher than 10%.