[Study on Hg2+ distribution and speciation in different tissues of rats]

Abstract

Mercury is one of the important pollutants that threaten people health greatly in environment. The purpose of this paper was to determine mercury distribution and mercury binding proteins in different tissues of rat fed orally with mercuric chloride by ICP-MS and SEC-UV-ICP-MS. The result showed that liver and kidney induced large amount of metallothioneins that was found to bind to mercury, copper and zinc after mercury intake in stomach and intestines. The metallothioneins induced may be prior to combine the mercury so that it would decrease mercury binding with the other proteins that would disable their normal function.