Determination of the content of bioelements in an aerosol produced from commercially available mineral waters using a Mini Graduation Tower-2018 device

Abstract

There are various types of bottled water available, including: spring water and high-, medium- or low-mineralized mineral water. Water with the highest content of mineral salts (>1000 ppm), i.e. medicinal water, has been the most widely used in medicine. One of the most commonly used forms of application of the described water types are e.g. inhalations. It is worth mentioning, however, that the use of these types of water, due to the high content of minerals (barium, chloride, sulphate ions), has the influence on human health. Although a little is known about the limitations of using the external method, and particularly the recently popular aerosol therapy. The popularity of this method of treatment is due to the fact that it can be used at different age groups of patients and in contrary to oral drug dosage, aerosol therapy has faster onset of action and a much greater safety profile of the therapy. It is worth noting that not all producers of medicinal water provide information about the total mineral content of their products. Moreover, producers do not declare if mineral water can be applied in children. The aim of the study was the quantitative analysis of selected metals: sodium, potassium, magnesium, iron and zinc in 7 selected medicinal and mineral waters. The newly constructed Mini-Graduation Tower 2018 device was used to generate the aerosol. In most of the tested waters (except for the zinc content in the Słotwinka water), statistically significant changes in the content of the tested ions were demonstrated in relation to the control sample which were mineralizates obtained from catontrol (the filter subject to the 4-time distilled water aerosol). The highest content of divalent and trivalent ions was found in the mineralizate obtained from Zabłocka Mgiełka Solankowa, while the highest content of monovalent cations was found in Franciszek and Helena water. In all samples, the ion content obtained indicates the possibility of using the tested water in aerosol therapy. The obtained results show that the "Minitężnia-2018" device can be used to study aerosols.

Keywords

• aerosol
• mineral water
• atomic absorption spectrometry
• bioelements
• mini-graduation tower 2018