Silver enhancement of tissue mercury: demonstration of mercury in autometallographic silver grains from rat kidneys |
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Authors: | J O N?rgaard B M?ller-Madsen N Hertel G Danscher |
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Affiliation: | Department of Cell Biology, University of Aarhus, Denmark. |
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Abstract: | The autometallographic silver enhancement method has been applied increasingly to detect trace amounts of mercury in preparations of biological tissue. It has, however, been difficult to establish the presence of a core of mercury within the silver grain by direct methods such as energy dispersive X-ray analysis. In the present work, a sample of autometallographic silver grains was prepared from kidneys of rats exposed to mercury in the drinking water. Frozen sections from the kidneys were silver-enhanced and subsequently all organic material was removed by enzymatic digestion. The remaining pellet of silver grains was analyzed by proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and mercury was demonstrated in an amount of 0.1-0.5% compared to silver. In addition, it was demonstrated that two pools of catalytic mercury compounds exist, probably corresponding to sulfide- and selenium-bound mercury. |
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