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Risha Jasmine Nathan ¹, P. Sharma ², Lily Saroj Nathan ³, C. Theju Kumar ⁴

Affiliations
1 Forensic Chemistry & Toxicology,, IN
2 SSA(Chemistry) Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science, New Delhi, IN
3 Zoology, Ewing Christian College, Allahabad, IN
4 Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science, New Delhi, IN

Abstract

Water is one of the many contaminated natural products which are consumed by humans. Contamination of drinking water with toxic metals like Lead and Copper has been studied by earlier researchers by different methods of sample preparation and analysis. Both lead and copper produce adverse health effects when taken by the body in excess.

In India, there are many refugee camps; the source of drinking water in these camps being natural ground water or tap water. Since assessment of drinking water at various places has been done earlier, we decided to assess drinking water supplied to Pakistani Hindu Refugees and Tibetan Refugees for toxic lead and copper levels.

Flame atomic absorption spectrometry has been used for quantitation of lead and copper. Standard addition method has been used for analysis. The recovery of spiked samples in case of lead (99.4%) and copper (98.4%) showed that the method is reliable for the determination of trace amounts of lead and copper in water samples. In Pakistani Hindu Refugee camp, lead concentration in tap and ground water was found to be 1.46 ± 0.0058 μg/l and 1.48 ± 0.0058 μg/l respectively, whereas, copper concentration was found to be 1.28 ± 0.0058 μg/l and 1.29 ± 0.0173 μg/l respectively. In Tibetan Refugee Camp, the tap water had lead and copper concentration as 0.61 ± 0.0100 μg/l and 0.63 ± 0.0252 μg/l respectively as determined by flame atomic absorption spectrometry.

Keywords

Toxic Metals, Lead, Copper, Drinking Water, Refugee Camps, Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry

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Risha Jasmine Nathan ¹, P. Sharma ², L. S. Nathan ³

Affiliations
1 Forensic Chemistry & Toxicology, IN
2 Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science, Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India, IN
3 Zoology, Ewing Christian College, Allahabad, IN

Abstract

Metal toxicity in humans is a result of long term or high level exposure to toxic metals which enter the body through common media as air, water, and food. More recently, with the increase in regular use of numerous cosmetic products, which have been reported to contain heavy metals as contaminants, human bodies are being exposed to them on a daily basis. A number of dermal absorption studies have been conducted which satisfy the assumption that harmful chemicals get absorbed into the blood stream through skin.

Hair-dye powders are one of the most commonly used cosmetic products by all- young and old these days and are applied on a regular basis. If contaminated, direct application on hair and scalp can increase chances of absorption of toxic metals as lead and copper and can potentially add up to significant exposure levels as these have cumulative effect. This has drawn our attention to assess the levels of these metals in nine samples of common hair-dye powders available in markets of Delhi. The levels of these metals were determined by Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer after a wet digestion method for sample preparation. Lead and Copper were detected in different concentrations in all the studied samples, the highest being 1.42 ± 0.0814 ppm and 0.75 ± 0.0693 ppm for lead and copper respectively.

Keywords

No keywords

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Risha Jasmine Nathan ¹, P. Sharma ¹, Lily Saroj Nathan ²

Affiliations
1 Forensic Chemistry and Toxicology, Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan National Institute of Criminology, New Delhi, IN
2 Ewing Christian College, University of Allahabad, IN

Abstract

Muscle relaxants are occasionally encountered in forensic toxicological cases for identification and quantitation. Due to unavailability of human samples, the analysis of the muscle relaxant vecuronium was done using post-mortem rat visceral samples. Rats were injected with bolus overdose of the drug and the post mortem samples were subject to ion-pair extraction with metanil yellow dye. Method for identification of the drug by LC-MS-MS was established first with secondary standard aqueous vecuronium solutions and then applied on the questioned samples. Quantitation was done to find the quantity of the drug in liver and kidney samples.

Keywords

Aminosteroid, Muscle Relaxant Vecuronium, Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry.

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