The variation of trace element concentrations in single human head hairs

Obrusník, I.; Gislason, Jason; Maes, Daniël; McMillan, D.K.; D’Auria, J.M.; Pate, Brian D.

doi:10.1007/bf02516563

Cited by 38 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…There is a steady increase of Sr concentrations in this sample from the distal end (~6 ppm) to the proximal (root) end (~15 ppm) portions of the hair, accompanied by a slight (but statistically discernable) increase of the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios of the respective residues (from 0.7093 to 0.7098; Table 1). The decreasing concentration trend from distal to proximal disagrees with observations by Obrusnik et al (1973), who reported increasing concentrations of some trace elements towards the distal end in human scalp hair. Generally, such variations reflect the slightly changing bioavailable Sr (in the case of our wool/hair study) over the period of the wool growth (~1 year), possibly by moving around between different pastures.…”

Section: Results For Modern Sheep Wool/haircontrasting

confidence: 96%

Provenance of Ancient Textiles—a Pilot Study Evaluating the Strontium Isotope System in Wool*

Frei

Mannering

et al. 2009

Archaeometry

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Strontium isotopes are used in archaeology to reconstruct human and animal migration routes. We present results of a pilot study applying strontium isotope analyses to modern sheep hair as a basis for its potential use as a provenance tracer for ancient woollen textiles. Our hydrofluoric acid‐based, lipid soluble analytical protocol, also tested on a number of ancient textile fibres, allows for contamination‐free, low blank strontium isotope analysis of minimal amounts of archaeological material. 87Sr/86Sr ratios of decontaminated sheep hair agree well with the compositions of biologically available (soluble) strontium fractions from the respective feeding ground soils, a translatable requirement for any potentially successful provenance tracing applied to wool textiles.

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Section: Results For Modern Sheep Wool/haircontrasting

confidence: 96%

Provenance of Ancient Textiles—a Pilot Study Evaluating the Strontium Isotope System in Wool*

Frei

Mannering

et al. 2009

Archaeometry

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“…The content of Au in Napoleon's hair (0.366-1.259 mg/kg) found in this work is consistent with previous work that reported an Au value of 0.45±0.06 mg/kg [12]. For the element Ag, an investigation reported less than 1 mg/kg in hair [14].…”

Section: Inaa Resultssupporting

confidence: 93%

Elemental contents in Napoleon?s hair cut before and after his death: did Napoleon die of arsenic poisoning?

Lin

Alber

Henkelmann

2004

Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry

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Whether or not Napoleon died of arsenic poisoning is an open question on which debate has been active since 1960. This work examined several of his hairs, cut at different times and in different places: two pieces cut the day after his death on the island of St. Helena (1821) and two pieces cut seven years earlier (1814) during his first exile on the island of Elba. INAA results show that all of the samples of Napoleon's hair have an elevated arsenic concentration. These results disfavor the arsenic poisoning theory. Aside from arsenic, 18 other elements are reported, providing additional information for examining the arsenic poisoning theory.

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“…Since several authors have indicated (Obrusnik et a!., 1972;Eads and Lambdin, 1973) that zinc variations along single hairs are small, in order to obtain the distribution of elemental concentrations along the hair, one may measure just the elemental concentration relative to zinc. Such relative measurements can be easily performed on single hairs with proton-induced X-ray emission spectroscopy (Valkovic et aI., 1974).…”

Section: Experimental Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%