Agnieszka Przybyłowicz - Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Jagiellonian University

A graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry ( GF AAS ) method was developed for the determination of copper in selected alternative materials. The method is characterised by a low limit of detec tion, good accuracy and satisfactory precision, while the duration of a single measurement is approximately 80 s. It allowed an application of the developed method to determine copper in small samples of hair and nails with equipment available in most analytical labora tories. The developed GF AAS method was successfully applied to routine analyses using samples collected from healthy humans. The study has shown similar con centration of copper in fingernails and toenails collected from women and men, which was 2–3 times lower than concentration of this element in hair of both genders. The correlation between concentration of copper in nails and hair allows one to use hair, fingernails an d toenails as invariable materials for the evaluation of chronic exposure to copper.