Biljana M. Kaličanin¹,
Ružica S. Nikolić ²,
Goran M. Nikolić ³

¹FACULTY OF TECHNOLOGY, LESKOVAC,
²FACULTY OF MATHEMATICS, NIŠ,
³FACULTY OF MEDICINE, NIŠ

Lead belongs to the group of very toxic elements with cumulative toxic effects and is one of the most quantitated toxic metal in biological matrixes (teeth, bones, nails, blood). Teeth, as the indicators of lead body burden and as an available tissue for examination, have been analyzed in this work on migration property of lead from primary matrix tooth. Considering the fact that metal ceramic crowns remain in human organism for a long time and are exposed to the influence of various agents, oral fluids, food, drink, it was interesting to check if the release of heavy metals was possible under the same conditions.

In order to determine total and soluble lead content in teeth and dental implants, potentiometric stripping analysis was applied (PSA) as highly sensitive, selective and reliable method. The flameless atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) was applied as a comparative method which is recommended according to ISO and JUS standards as a suitable method to determine low content of heavy metals.

Key words: teeth, metal-ceramic crown, lead, potentio-metric stripping analysis