ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Biosensors and Biomolecular Electronics
Quantitative Determination of Mercury in Blood-Based DL-Cysteine-Modified Direct Mercury Analyzer Method
Provisionally accepted
- Third People's Hospital of Guizhou Province, Guizhou, China
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Occupational mercury poisoning is a significant work-related illness due to that mercury vapor and its compounds can enter the human body and cause systemic damage. Therefore, regular blood mercury monitoring is essential for occupationally exposed individuals. Among existing detection methods, mercury analyzers are widely used for direct blood mercury determination. Despite the utility of direct mercury analyser (DMA), their application to blood samples is often compromised by limitations such as method instability and mercury carryover. To address these challenges, this study introduces a DL-cysteine-assisted determination method. It is based on the principle that DL-cysteine forms stable complexes with mercury in blood, thereby mitigating container adsorption and memory effects. Specifically, DL-cysteine solution was incorporated into both the mercury calibration standards and the blood samples within the sample boat prior to analysis using a DMA. The limit of detection was 0.5 μg/L, and the limit of quantification was 1.5 μg/L. Method accuracy, evaluated by spiked recovery, ranged from 99.14% to 99.92%. Experiments demonstrated that the stability, recovery, and repeatability of the direct mercury determination method were improved by introducing DL-cysteine, which offers practical value in enhancing the performance of direct mercury determination methods and is suitable for routine blood mercury monitoring.
Keywords: blood mercury, Direct mercury analyzer, DL-cysteine, Ethylmercury, methylmercury
Received: 28 Dec 2025; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Zuoxiang, Hou, Long, Bo, Ling, Li, Haoyu and Yi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Li Zuoxiang
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