Abstract
DURING an investigation of the arsenic content of human hair it was discovered fortuitously that a well-known household detergent contained an appreciable proportion of arsenic. This unexpected finding arose in the following way. Since 1954 we have been studying the use of activation analysis for the estimation of arsenic in samples of hair, skin and nail and other tissues. For some elements (including arsenic) activation analysis is more sensitive than the conventional methods. It is, for example, a matter of no great difficulty to estimate the arsenic content of a single human hair in this way—a measurement which could not easily be made in any other manner.
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References
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LENIHAN, J., SMITH, H. & CHALMERS, J. Arsenic in Detergents. Nature 181, 1463–1464 (1958). https://doi.org/10.1038/1811463a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1811463a0
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