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Spectrographs Studies of Lead in Human Blood.

1936; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3181/00379727-35-8977p

1535-3702

Janice McMillen, Gordon H. Scott,

Electrochemical Analysis and Applications

It is of some interest to know the normal distribution of lead in bloods of persons not known to be definitely exposed to lead contamination. We have been able through the courtesy of Dr. J. T. Jean to obtain samples of blood from 89 incoming students. This series, because of probable absence of industrial or occupational hazard, formed a good random sample of the population. This is especially true in view of the fact that the samples were obtained shortly after the vacation period. As might be expected our series contained a larger number of St. Louis inhabitants than one would ordinarily select for such a study. The group being medical students was predominantly male. Only 6 females are represented in the series. Blood was drawn into pyrex test tubes which had been cleaned with nitric acid. After the blood had clotted small pieces of the clot were placed on the ends of carbon electrodes and dried by moderate heat. The residue was then burned in the flame of an intermittent arc. Ordinarily the samples ignited without difficulty. Since 100 flashes consumed nearly all the material on the electrode it was necessary to prepare 3 separate samples. With the flashes occurring at 80 per minute, 300 flashes gave the proper exposure. A Bausch and Lomb medium quartz spectrograph with a slit width of 0.015 mm. was used. For the quantitative estimations the intensity of the 2833.07 Pb line was compared with the 2831.56 Fe line (Scott and McMillen). The relative densities of the iron and lead lines were interpreted in terms of absolute values by a series of blank runs of rabbit blood to which known amounts of lead had been added.