Methodical peculiarities and practice of determining aluminum in blood and urine via mass spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma

Abstract

Toxicants produce adverse effects on population health thus causing health risks; assessment of such risks is a relevant trend in contemporary hygienic research. A list of toxic elements that are to be controlled in biological media includes, for example, mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, and aluminum (this element belongs to the 2nd hazard category). Aluminum is one of those elements which are the most widely spread in nature and it most frequently occurs in emissions from aluminum, mining, varnish and paint, and other productions. We developed a procedure for determining mass concentrations of aluminum in blood and urine via mass spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma (ICP-MS) (FR.1.31.2017.27357); the procedure allows determining aluminum contents in blood within a range from 20 to 200 µg/l with 31% precision; within 200–700 µg/l, with 23% precision; in urine, within a range from 0.1 to 10 µg/l, with 30% precision; within 10–1,000 µg/l, with 23% precision. We analyzed 192 blood and urine samples taken from children (n = 96) and adults (n = 54) who lived in the Eastern Siberia in a zone influenced by a large metallurgic aluminum-producing enterprise. Simple mean (SM) of aluminum contents in children’s and adults’ blood amounted to 21 µg/l; 32 µg/l and 21 µg/l in urine respectively. The article also contains comparative assessment of aluminum contents in blood and urine of people living in Russia against reference concentrations applied in Europe and the USA when national programs for human biological monitoring (HBM) were implemented.

Keywords

• aluminum
• blood
• urine
• children
• adults
• mass spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma (icp-ms)
• reference concentrations
• octopole reaction system (ors)
• internal standard