Elemental composition of head hair and fingernails of some Nigerian subjects.

In this article, we present the elemental concentrations determined by INAA for 30 elements measured in some or all head hair samples of 100 Nigerian subjects and 20 elements in the fingernails of some of the same subjects. Measurements of the skewness of the distribution of each element in both tissues confirm previous reports that many tend toward a log-normal distribution. Thus, their concentrations in the tissues may not be under any homeostatic control. The ranges of elemental concentrations together with the medians, and the arithmetic and geometric means, with their respective standard deviations are presented and compared with literature values for other populations. Correlations between elements detected in hair are also sought.