Information from Lateral Scans of Single Hairs by X-Ray Fluorescence

The trace metal content of hair has been used for many years as an indicator of the level in many biological systems. In the study of the aftermath of a tragic case of mercury poisoning from the consumption of bread made from grain seeds which had been treated with methymercury as a fungicide, a definite relationship between the blood level and the concentration found in the hair was determined. Some of the children born of pregnant women who had eaten the grain were affected and others were not. To obtain a more precise time and magnitude of the maximum concentration in the blood, a special energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence instrument (XRF) was built to determine the concentration of mercury in a one mm. segment of a single hair. It also had the capability of measuring a number of other elements simultaneously. The profiles of the concentrations of other elements along a single hair showed important information not given by analysis of the entire hair which gives only an average. It is recommended that every hair investigation start with a profile scan of a single hair, and an instrument capable of doing this has recently come on the market.