Analysis of whole blood and placenta - A case study of mothers and their babies

In a previous report optimisation of ED-XRF and TXRF for whole blood analysis has been reported. In the present work the optimised technique has been applied to investigate possible influence on pregnancy outcome due to an environment characterised by high levels of pollutants. Two groups of maternal and neonate whole blood were analysed with TXRF and GFAAS. The material of the first group was taken from Zabrze (Upper Silesia, Poland), an industrial region with a high degree of pollution. The second group consisted of controls from the Göteborg region in Sweden, where the levels of toxic pollutants in the environment are not as high as those in Zabrze. The results show that as compared with the controls the levels of essential elements like Zn and Se were lower in the Zabrze infants while the levels of toxic elements like Cd and Pb were higher in this group.