| Abstrakt: |
We studied the exposure to Ca and Sr in a healthy group of children born and living in Alcalá de Henares (Spain), and evaluated the effect of different factors including sex and area of residence. Scalp-hair was collected from 120 children (6 to 9-years-old; 70 girls). Both elements were monitored by ICP-MS (LODs=162.14, 0.19 in µg/g, for Ca and Sr, respectively). Although results showed high levels of censored data, especially in scalp-hair from male participants (80 vs 22.8% and 44.9 vs. 8.6%), the levels of both elements were significantly higher in girls' hair: 281.18 vs. 211.99 and 0.780 vs. 0.351, data presented as geometric means in µg/g for Ca and Sr, respectively. Our results would be in agreement with the literature, which reports higher levels of Sr and major osteotrophic elements (Ca and magnesium) in hair from women. Although the presence of Ca and Sr in scalp-hair was dependent of the biological sex, levels were not influenced by the place of residence for both metals (p-value=0.867 and 0.845, respectively), perhaps due to the high presence of censored values that reduced the number of observations per sub-area. Thus, slightly higher levels of both metals were detected in hair from children living in the part of Alcalá that supports more industrial activities than those with more green areas (246.8 vs 234.3, 0.75 vs. 0.62, all in µg/g, for Ca and Sr, respectively). In general, children living in Alcalá would have shown little environmental exposure to these metals, as the median values were much lower than those determined in hair samples from 12-13 years-old children from ecologically unfavourable regions in Ukraine with high levels of industrial contamination (168.11 vs. 790.11 and 0.41 vs. 1.98, all in µg/g). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
