The effect of age, sex, smoking habit and hair color on the composition of hair

Determination of Minor elements of Human Scalp Hair from Karbala, Iraq

“…Surprisingly, the content of the majority of elements in hair of females was higher than in the hair of males from Karbala, Iraq. A possible explanation is that the majority of women living in the study area have long term exposure to exogenous contamination; namely permanent solutions, dyes and bleaches [15]. Similar findings have been previously reported for Na, Ca, Mg and Fe [24,28].…”

“…Similar results have been reported by other researches for hair samples [26,27,28,19,29]. In some cases, the value of Fe is higher than literature value [15,10]. : n is the number of samples…”

“…Conversely, there are no significant differences for the other elements between smoker and non-smoker groups. A higher level of Ca and Mg and lower levels of Na and Fe in smokers was also found in other study [15,24]. One study has reported that the levels of Ca (16000 -27800 mg/kg dry weight) and Mg (8950 -16750 mg/kg dry weight) in commercial cigarette tobacco are higher than other elements [10].…”

“…Previous study has found that the compositions of human scalp hair are varied in individual having a natural color hair comparison with those that were artificially colored. This study was found that colored hair contained more Ca (270%), Mg (260%), than naturally colored hair [15]. In the case of Fe, mean values were lower in females than in males.…”

“…On the other hand, the concentration of these elements can be used to investigate dietary exposure to chemical contaminants, especially toxic metals, including the effects of smoking and drug usage of an individual or populations [14]. Previous studies have reported that human scalp hair samples can be used to evaluate the effect of age, sex and healthy on element levels inside human body [15]. Furthermore, hair analysis may evidence of raised chemical levels in domestic and occupational exposure cases [4,16].…”