Quantification of Manganese and Mercury in Toenail in Vivo Using Portable X-ray Fluorescence (XRF)

Overview

Journal Biomarkers

Specialty Biochemistry

Date 2017 Sep 14

PMID 28901783

Citations 8

Authors

Xinxin Zhang

Aaron J Specht

Marc G Weisskopf

Jennifer Weuve

Linda H Nie

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background And Objective: Toenail is an advantageous biomarker to assess exposure to metals such as manganese and mercury. Toenail Mn and Hg are in general analyzed by chemical methods such as inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and atomic absorption spectrophotometry. In this project, a practical and convenient technology-portable X-ray florescence (XRF)-is studied for the noninvasive in vivo quantification of manganese and mercury in toenail.

Material And Methods: The portable XRF method has advantages in that it does not require toenail clipping and it can be done in 3 min, which will greatly benefit human studies involving the assessment of manganese and mercury exposures. This study mainly focused on the methodology development and validation which includes spectral analysis, system calibration, the effect of toenail thickness, and the detection limit of the system. Manganese- and mercury-doped toenail phantoms were made. Calibration lines were established for these measurements.

Results: The results show that the detection limit for manganese is 3.65 μg/g (ppm) and for mercury is 0.55 μg/g (ppm) using 1 mm thick nail phantoms with 10 mm soft tissue underneath.

Discussion And Conclusion: We conclude that portable XRF is a valuable and sensitive technology to quantify toenail manganese and mercury in vivo.

Citing Articles

Ways to Measure Metals: From ICP-MS to XRF.

Adesina K, Burgos C, Grier T, Sayam A, Specht A Curr Environ Health Rep. 2025; 12(1):7.

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Benchtop x-ray fluorescence to quantify elemental content in nails non-destructively.

Specht A, Adesina K, Read D, Weisskopf M Sci Total Environ. 2024; 918:170601.

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Quantitative analysis of human hairs and nails.

Bali V, Khajuria Y, Maniyar V, Rai P, Kumar U, Ghany C Biophys Rev. 2023; 15(3):401-417.

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Portable X-ray Fluorescence as a Rapid Determination Tool to Detect Parts per Million Levels of Ni, Zn, As, Se, and Pb in Human Toenails: A South India Case Study.

Bhatia M, Specht A, Ramya V, Sulaiman D, Konda M, Balcom P Environ Sci Technol. 2021; 55(19):13113-13121.

PMID: 34529917 PMC: 8582015. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c00937.

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