Elemental Analysis And Toxicity Of Natural Copper In Different Producing Areas

Pyritum, one of the rare mineral drugs, is a kind of sulfide minerals and contains mainly iron disulfide (FeS2). Pyritum is an important traditional Chinese medicine in department of orthopedics and can effectively reset bone and relieve pain. It is one of the main components of many essential bone prescription. Pyritum contains iron, copper, manganese, zinc and other elements useful for treatment of fracture healing, and contains sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium beneficial to human body. There are also toxic heavy metals as arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium, chromium. These elements can easily accumulate in human body, which can obviously damage to the normal biochemical reaction and physiological functions of the human body.This paper focus on the preliminary study of quality standard and toxicity of pyritum. All sources are provided by the enterprises in the main pyrite producing area. We identified iron salts in pyritum of different producing area, and the results were all positive. X-ray energy spectrum was preliminary used to analysis elements in pyritum, which can intuitively analysis the law of the elements distribution in pyritum. The analysis shows that all the samples mainly contains Fe and S, thus further provided the basis for the identification and determination of pyritum. We improved sample handling of the measurement of pyritum and titanium trichloride-potassium dichromate titrimetric method was used to mensurate iron. The content of iron in pyritum of different places is around 41%-66%. Arsenic, mercury, copper, lead, cadmium, chromium in pyritum of different producing area was determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Further methodological study was carried on and the results were satisfied. Reference to the national standard on the determination of elements in the pyrite, we improved the method of sample handling and determination conditions and determined zinc, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium in pyritum of different producing area by atomic absorption spectrophotometry, so as to better comprehend the quality of pyritum. The result shows the contents of sodium, potassium are close, but the contents of zinc, calcium, magnesium make great disparity. Overall, pyritum of Jiangsu Province is suitable for clinical application. Then we imitated artificial in vitro digestion environment and determined the digestion conditions, so as to digest pyritum. Through the MTT test we analyzed the growth and proliferation condition of Hepatocytes L-02 when using pyritum. Toxicity studies on the model animal of zebrafish show that pyritum displayed the apparent developmental toxicity, and this effect has the dose-effect relationship with the content of arsenic. On the other hand, the acute toxicity of pyritum on zebrafish is lower. This study further provides some reference for the quality control and clinical application of pyritum.