Hair: A Record of Pollution Exposure
New research demonstrates hair can record human exposure to chemicals over extended periods (days, weeks, months).
Anna Neville, inspired by her grandmother’s dementia and potential links to pollution in Gary, Indiana, investigated whether hair could reveal exposure history.
A pilot experiment with her own hair revealed elevated levels of phthalates coinciding with a visit to her parents’ house during renovations.
This lead to a full-scale study led by Pawel Misztal and Neville,published in Chemical Research in Toxicology.
Hair offers advantages over traditional methods (urine/blood) due to its steady growth rate and ability to capture a longer-term chemical history (approx. 1 month per half inch).
The researchers developed a method using thermal desorption and a proton transfer reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (“sniffer”) to analyze intact hair strands for thousands of compounds quickly and efficiently.