Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 11 A Datun Road, Beijing 100101, PR China.
Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2013 Oct;96:118-23. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2013.05.031. Epub 2013 Jul 3.
Rare earth minerals have been mined for more than 50 years in Inner Mongolia of China. In the mining area rare earth elements (REE) may be significantly accumulated in humans. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to characterize the REE concentrations in hair of local residents. REE concentrations in hair of 118 subjects were determined. The results showed that the mean concentrations of the determined REE in the hair of both females and males were usually higher from mining area than from control area. The mean concentrations of all the fifteen REE were much higher in hair of males than in hair of females from mining area. This suggested that males might be more sensitive to REE than females. In addition, the mean contents of the REE in hair of miners, particularly light REE (La, Ce, Pr and Nd), were usually much higher than the values in hair of non-miners from both mining area and control area, indicating that the miners were exposed to higher concentrations of REE in occupational environment. Among age groups, the relationships between REE concentrations and age groups showed that more and more concentrations of light REE accumulated in body of both females and males with age until 60 years, while heavy REE concentrations decreased with age in males who were exposed to low concentrations of heavy REE.
中国内蒙古已经开采了 50 多年的稀土矿物。在采矿区，人类可能会大量积累稀土元素（REE）。因此，本文的目的是描述当地居民头发中 REE 浓度的特征。对 118 名受试者的头发中 REE 浓度进行了测定。结果表明，女性和男性的头发中，矿区的 REE 平均浓度通常高于对照区。矿区男性头发中所有 15 种 REE 的平均浓度均明显高于女性头发中的 REE 平均浓度。这表明男性可能比女性对 REE 更敏感。此外，矿工头发中的 REE 含量均值，尤其是轻 REE（La、Ce、Pr 和 Nd），通常明显高于矿区和对照区非矿工头发中的 REE 含量值，表明矿工在职业环境中接触到更高浓度的 REE。在年龄组中，REE 浓度与年龄组之间的关系表明，无论男女，随着年龄的增长，轻 REE 的浓度在体内不断积累，直到 60 岁，而在接触低浓度重 REE 的男性中，重 REE 的浓度随年龄的增长而下降。
