Elemental markers of exposure under combined oral introduction of chemical mixtures with prevalent antimony and arsenic into white wistar rats

The present paper dwells on assessing oral sub-acute exposure of a warm-blooded body to non-organic compounds that contain antimony and arsenic and are introduced with drinking water. Another issue was to assess changes in their con-centrations as well as concentrations of other elements in tissues of certain organs. We accomplished elemental analysis of tissues taken from exposed white Wistar rats; the analysis included the following elements: S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Se, Br, Rb, Sr, Mo, As, Hg, Pb, Sb. As per its results we characterized changes in elemental structure of the liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, femoral muscle, thyroid gland, and whole blood caused in white male Wistar rats by sub-acute combined oral exposure to arsenic and antimony. Arsenic was detected in all the examined internal organs after 3 weeks of combined oral exposure to it in a dose equal to 15 µg/kg together with exposure to antimony in a dose equal to 61 µg/kg. It concerned both test and control group as animals in the test group had arsenic in a dose equal to 0.010 ± 0.002 µg/kg in the thyroid gland tissues and up to 0.950 ± 0.155 µg/kg in blood; animals in the control group, from 0.028 ± 0.003 µg/kg in muscular tissues to 1.56 ± 0.03 µg/kg in blood. Antimony was detected in blood only (0.005 ± 0.0021 µg/kg in the control group and 0.021 ± 0.0009 µg/kg in the test one).
We detected a direct correlation between arsenic contents in organ tissues and contents of potassium, iron, and mercury in the control group and contents of iron and mercury in the test one. Strontium and rubidium concentrations in organs of animals in the test group were inversely correlated with arsenic concentrations.
We analyzed a correlation between growing arsenic contents in tissues of animals in the test group against the control and changes in contents of other elements and revealed a statistically authentic correlation with an increase in concentrations of potassium, molybdenum, iron, and lead, as well as an inverse character of this correlation.
We concluded that there were several markers of oral exposure to arsenic and antimony as components in a complex mixture detected in white Wistar rats; they were arsenic in tissues of the liver, kidneys, muscles, thyroid gland, and whole blood; antimony in whole blood; increase in contents of chlorine, potassium, sulfur, calcium, rubidium, zinc, manganese, and chromium in the liver and kidneys; a decrease in concentrations of chromium, manganese, iron, copper, molybdenum, nickel, selenium, and strontium in blood, heart, thyroid gland, and lungs.