Interactions between concentrations of chemical elements in human femoral heads

Environmental and occupational exposure to various metals has been a major public health concern and the subject of many studies. With the development of industry and transportation, environmental pollution has markedly worsened. As a result, metals are now ubiquitous and are absorbed into the body with food, drinking water, and polluted air. Exposure to these elements leads to numerous health problems, affecting almost every system of the human body, including the skeletal system. Bone is a specific research material that is difficult to obtain, therefore chemical analyses of metal concentrations in this tissue are rarely found in the literature. Nevertheless, bone, due to its long regeneration period, can serve as a biomarker of a long-term metal accumulation resulting from environmental or occupational exposure. Our study was conducted on bone samples harvested from inhabitants of the Upper Silesia region during hip replacement surgery. Femoral heads removed during surgery were sectioned into slices and further subdivided into samples comprising articular cartilage, cortical bone, and trabecular bone. Concentrations of 12 trace elements were measured with an atomic absorption spectrophotometry method. We found significant correlation between concentrations of these metal elements in the samples of cortical bone. This is determined not only by the physiological functions of these metals in hydroxyapatite, but also by the specific mineral structure of the bone tissue.