摘要：The importance of fingernails as bioindicators for assessing occupational hazard from high risk female workers working in the match, cracker and beedi factories in and around Virudhunagar district of South Tamilnadu, India was studied. Fingernails of different age group female workers were collected, chemically treated, dried and analysed for the concentrations of different heavy metals Cd, Cr, Cu and Pb by atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Student t-test was used to find out the statistical significance of mean values between different age groups. The levels of lead in the finger nails of fire workers (81.5 μg g-1), match workers (51.6 μg g-1) and beedi workers (44.2 μg g-1) were higher compared to other metals. In beedi workers Cd (3.86 μg g-1) and Cr (2.72 μg g-1) were particularly higher than the normal level of control subject not exposed in occupational working environment. The level of copper concentration (93.42 μg g-1) was higher in match workers than the normal level of the control subject. From the study it is clear that there was significant positive correlation between their age and years of working experience with the concentration of the metals. In conclusion, this study proved that fingernails could be used successfully as a biological indicator for the assessment of heavy metal pollution.
