Posted by Larry Hoover on April 23, 2009, at 8:35:57
In reply to Radioactive, posted by Sigismund on April 21, 2009, at 18:18:15
> This is fantastic.
>
> At last I have a good excuse.
>
> In relation to the normal reference ranges my results from hair analysis revealed multiples of the maximum
> Mercury X5
> Antimony X3
> Lead X2
> Cadmium X2
> Uranium X2
>
>
> Now I fear Blueberry will pop up here and say that hair testing is completely unreliable and doesn't mean anything, but this is the best excuse I've had in 20 years and I'd like you all to be mindful of that.I don't wanna rain on your parade, but there are limitations to what can be inferred from this analytical procedure. You asked me to comment, so here goes....
I searched the literature, and I can find scant evidence for standardization of either the lab methods, or the normative values to be applied to the results. It has been shown that lab-to-lab reproducibility of hair analysis is rather low, and thus the accuracy of the concentrations determined must be interpreted in that light. Without a standard protocol to follow, who knows what happened in your lab. Moreover, there is no accepted standard of what are the normal levels of minerals in hair. So, even if the concentrations arising from the hair analysis are accurate, we are left with the question of how to interpret them.
A proper analytical procedure would be to run a standard reference sample, a hair sample with precisely known mineral content, and your unknown hair sample, to validate the recoveries of the method on that day. Then the results of the unknown are to be expressed with the uncertainties indicated by the recovery percentage of the reference sample against its own analytical results on that day. I suspect you didn't get anything like that with your results. Nor do I suspect that you were provided with the source of the normative data against which your results were compared.
There should also be different norms assigned to different genders and different age groups. For reasons not yet explained, males tend to have roughly twice the hair mineral content as do women with similar exposures. And, as we age, hair mineral content tends to rise. That may be due to cumulative exposure, or it may be due to an aging effect. No one has ever sorted out which it is. It's possible that your results are because you're an older male, rather than due to cumulative exposure.
So, overall, there are some significant limitations on the method itself. But that does not mean that the results are meaningless.
I looked at hair analysis for each of the minerals you've listed. There are mineral-specific limitations to consider. Hair is mineralized during its formation, and thus mineral content must somehow reflect blood concentrations of those minerals. However, once the hair grows above the skin surface, it is now exposed to the ambient environment, which can have sometimes profound effects on the total mineral concentrations. The latter effect seems to vary with the mineral under consideration.
For mercury, the results are probably the most meaningful. There have been a number of studies that compared blood, urine, and hair concentrations of mercury, and the correlations found are pretty good. Hair tends to have maybe 200 times the blood concentration of mercury. It may be a primary route of excretion. In any case, the 200:1 ratio is an average, and it varies over orders of magnitude. There are certain hair care products that influence mercury concentration, but I doubt they apply to you. The limitation of the result you obtained is that we don't know who it is that they're comparing you to. You have five times what, exactly? Five times the mercury content of the hair of a ten year old female vegetarian from Ethiopia, or five times the mercury content of a middle-aged fish-eating Japanese male, or???
I suppose that you probably do have a mercury exposure issue. That is the meaning to be had, I suppose. You just can't quantify that exposure in any concrete way. Only further testing (blood/urine) could offer more insight.
Antimony, I couldn't find much useful information. I did not find any suggestion that antimony at even three times a reference range was associated with adverse effects.
Lead in hair, unfortunately, can be entirely misleading. I found one paper that meticulously looked at the chemistry of the lead in hair samples taken from people who lived in the vicinity of a lead smelter. About 85-90% of the lead in the hair came from ambient exposure (it stuck to the hair after it grew), rather than from ingested exposure. (Still, if that much lead was floating around in the environment, I don't think it's a safe place to live.) Pretty hard to interpret without a blood level, and even those are not agreed on as reliable.
Not much info on cadmium, except this is one that men tend to express at significantly higher levels than do women. The 'what is normal?' question applies.
Uranium, no useful info of any kind.
Lead and uranium share certain geochemical aspects, however. If the geology where you live is underlain by granite, then there may be a groundwater source for these elements. Uranium can be found in granite, and lead is a nuclear break-down product of uranium. I wouldn't be concerned about that, honestly. The real risk, if that is true, is exposure to radon gas. Radon is a radioactive decay product of uranium. It seeps out of the ground, and tends to collect in e.g. basements because it is heavier than air. It is directly linked with various cancers, especially of the lungs.
In summary, you may want to follow up on the mercury exposure issue. Consider the hair analysis as nothing more than a preliminary screening test. I don't see any of the other findings to be of any significance, unless there is the possibility of regional exposure to radon.
Regards,
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:891989
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090416/msgs/892292.html