Inter-City Comparison of Metals in Scalp Hair Collected After the Gulf War 1991

A total of 110 hair samples were collected in March, 1991, from barber shops in A1 Hassa, Dhahran, Hafr A1 Batin, Jeddah and Riyadh cities. Information on the nationality and age of each donor was collected. All the collected hair samples were thoroughly washed, acid digested and metal concentrations were determined using an inductively coupled argon plasma analyzer. Mercury was determined by the cold vapor technique using a double-beam mercury analyzer. It was found that the mean concentration of aluminum, barium, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel, lead, vanadium, titanium, copper and molybdenum were higher in the hair samples from Dhahran than any other city that were investigated in this study. The hair samples from Jeddah were found to contain the lowest mean concentration of the above metals. Exceptionally high concentrations of sodium was found in the hair samples from Jeddah. The correlation analysis of all data (combined) revealed three groups of metals. The first group consisted of cadmium, cobalt, chromium, lead, nickel, vanadium, molybdenum, titanium, aluminum and barium. These metals were strongly inter-coirelated (P <0.01) suggesting a probable common source or coexisting sources of supply for these metals. Strontium, calcium, magnesium and zinc formulated the second group and were correlated (P <0.05) to each other. The remaining metals (copper, iron, potassium, and sodium) were occasionally correlated. Considering correlation coefficinet values as basis, the strongest and the weakest inter-elemental associations for the first group of metals were observed in hairs form Dhahran and Jeddah, respectively. This suggest that influence of the pollution source for these metals was the maximum at Dhahran and the minimum at Jeddah. Age and nationality of the donors have no significant (P <0.05) effect on metal concentrations in the scalp hair.