Serum aluminium in alumina exposed workers.

This study was performed after skepticism occurred in 1994 when alumina, or aluminium oxide, was thought to be the cause of sickness and death for certain workers at the Northern Industrial Park, Lumphun province, Thailand. Zeeman-graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometric method has been developed to quantify the aluminium (Al) levels in the serum of 399 workers and 500 blood donors. The results showed that Al levels in the directly (n = 62) exposed workers was significantly different from the indirectly exposed (n = 130) and non-exposed (n = 207) workers and donors. However, symptoms found in the directly exposed workers were not significantly different from those in the indirectly exposed workers. In addition, a high percentage of headache and fatigue found in both directly and indirectly exposed workers suggested that more than one hazard could be involved in the incidence of alumina.