In medical toxicology referrals, I regularly encounter patients who are worried about an environmental overexposure because a test battery of multiple substances showed one or another elevation. Typically the test was ordered with no specific toxin in mind, but rather as part of a "shot-gun" approach to making a diagnosis - not usually a good idea, as watching any episode of House will make clear. One of the environmental tests most likely to go awry is a hair analysis for metal toxins.
A recent issue of the Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report, the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) newsletter on all things unhealthy, minced no words on this topic. (www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5846a4.htm) Reporting on a "pseudo-outbreak" of antimony poisoning among a cadre of Florida firefighters, the CDC traced the problem back to the hair metals testing purporting to reveal the hazard. The CDC commentary was fairly scathing, stating that such tests are poorly standardized and the laboratories that report them are under-regulated and lack any recognized certification for the procedures used. Blood testing of the firefighters by the CDC, a more reliable method, did not find any antimony elevations.
The firefighter's concerns arose because their station uniforms had been treated with an antimony-containing flame retardant. Antimony is an unfamiliar substance nowadays, although it has a long history of use as a medicinal agent and, in ancient times, as a cosmetic. Antimony-containing drugs are still on the market, but restricted to the treatment of certain parasitic conditions and, even for those, antimony-free alternatives are often preferred because of the metal's potential toxicity.
Antimony also has a number of industrial uses. In fact, among workers heavily exposed on the job, this metal is well known to cause a peculiar, pox-like rash known in the trade as "antimony spots." This might make one wonder why antimony would pop-up as a textile treatment, but among the general public skin rashes have not been associated commonly with this metal (in contrast to nickel, for example, which is a frequent cause of dermatitis). In fact, although the firefighters in Florida had a variety of complaints, skin problems did not feature among them.
Unfortunately, antimony is only one of a myriad of flame retardant and other chemical textile treatments. For example, I was involved once in an investigation of skin complaints in a factory that put together "turn-out" gear for firefighters (http://www2a.cdc.gov/hhe/select.asp?PjtName=6687&bFlag=3). These uniforms were impregnated with enough formaldehyde, along with a second chemical called acetophenone, to account for the rashes experienced by the employees in the facility. Acetephenone is another odd choice for textile treatment: add one chlorine molecule to its structure and you get chloracetophenone - more commonly known as the chemical weapon, mace. It seems that the deeper you dig, the more potential problems you uncover arising from the flame retardants and related treatments.
These and related issues have been the impetus for the Green Science Policy Institute (http://greensciencepolicy.org), a new group (essentially a "green think tank") attempting to educate the public and policy makers on these problems. So there is no need to pull your own hair out in frustration and certainly no rationale to test those strands for personal pollution using unsound methods. Instead, check out the ways in which knowledge can be power by learning from the Green Policy Science Institute and other environmental public interest resources.
