Determination of total mercury in human hair and animal fur by combustion atomic absorption spectrometry

A commercially available mercury (Hg) analyzer based on sample combustion, gold amalgamation, and atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) was evaluated for the direct determination of Hg in composites of human hair and individual samples of horse fur. Results for human hair reference material (NIES No. 13) were within the certified range. Analyses of “blind” samples from an international interlaboratory (n>16) comparison study produced results within 1S.D. of the consensus means. Precision (%R.S.D.) was found to be <5% and total analyses time per sample was <10 min. This study demonstrated that analyzers based on combustion-AAS are suitable for wide-scale monitoring of Hg in human hair and animal fur.