Assessment of Some Heavy Metals in Blood Samples of Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Women in Damaturu, Yobe State

The investigation involved structured interview with the 65 healthy non pregnant women randomly selected from the various wards and 75 pregnant women that were attending antenatal clinics at 4 Health care centers in Damatru, followed by collection of blood samples for heavy metals analysis. The blood samples were aciddigested and the metals were analyzed by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry (using AAS -Buck scientific model 210GP). This study aimed at determining the status of toxic elements (heavy metals) in pregnant women of different age groups as well as nonpregnant women in Damaturu, Yobe State and to compare the results obtained with cited literature values of heavy metals in blood in order to assess the exposures of women to the heavy metals and possible health risks as designated by Health regulatory agencies such as WHO. The results obtained indicated higher concentrations of As, Cr, Ni, Mn, in the blood samples of Pregnant women, with Pb, Zn, Co, Hg, Al having higher concentrations in the non-pregnant blood samples. Among the metals analysed Zn was found to have the highest mean concentration of 0.0151, sem 0.0034 mg l-1 of blood, followed by As with mean concentration of 0.0076 with sem of 0.0370, whilst Cd was below detection limit in all the blood samples. The concentrations of the heavy metals in the blood of pregnant and non-pregnant women in Damaturu were found to within the WHO and US EPA permissible limits, and less than those analysed in China, Iran and US. E