Mercury in Mouse Hair: A Monitoring Tool for Environmental Exposure

Abstract

We determined mercury concentrations for soil and mouse hair from four Montana sites. Two of the sites associated with previous mining activity had elevated soil mercury concentrations. One site with an average total mercury concentration of 22.4 μg/g was> 200 times higher than concentrations reported for typical U.S. topsoils. Mean mercury concentrations of 4.5 μg lg and 5.l μg/g were measured in the hair of mice living on the contaminated sites-five to six times higher than hair concentrations from mice captured at the other two sites. From the infonnation collected during this study, monitoring of mercury levels in mouse hair could provide valuable data to assess either environmental exposure at contaminated sites or to establish environmental baseline data.