Spectrophotometric study of the heavy metal effects in animal blood

Abstract

n order to obtain information on the alteration of blood structure in the presence of heavy metals, mercury and lead, the modification of the absorption maxima of oxyhemoglobin was analyzed. Blood samples were collected from three healthy animal species: cows, horses and dogs.For the samples, 20 ml of 5% HgCl2and Pb(NO3)2solution and 0.5 ml of blood from each species have been prepared.The obtained experimental results have shown that heavy metals affect certain biophysical characteristics of hemoglobin in the blood of the studied animals. The strongest effect has been obtained in the case of mercury, which is the most toxic heavy metal; for the horse blood sample at the wavelength of 410 nm, the absorption measurement gave an error, indicating that the sample was severely degraded.