Abstract:

There are three mobile auditory ossicles (malleus, incus, stapes) between the ear membrane in middle ear and inner ear. The malleus is clung to tympanic membrane. The stapes is placed in the end of this chain. The incus is joint with both of those two bones and makes the connection between malleus and stapes. These mobile ossicles chain transmit the sound vibration from membrane tympany to fenestra vestibule. We used 10 malleus and 10 incus in our study. We obtained these bones from bone collection and cadaver used for education in the Anatomy Department of Erciyes University Medical Faculty. We determined the heavy metal content of the ossicles (ferrum, zinc, cadmium, copper, nickel, lead, manganese) by optical emission spectroscopy (ICPOES). According to the heavy metal analysis processes, these heavy metal contents have been determined in malleus as below; ferrum 0.3060±0.2987μg g-1, zinc 0.2503±0.1143μg g-1, cadmium 0.0028±0.0007μg g-1, lead 0.0483±0.0125μg g-1, copper 0.0334±0.0092μg g-1, manganese 0.0121±0.0214μg g-1, nickel 0.0129±0.0045μg g-1. These heavy metal contents have been determined in incus as below; ferrum 0.1902±0.1216μg g-1, zinc 0.2572±0.1214μg g-1, cadmium 0.0021±0.0006μg g-1, lead 0.0385±0.0061μg g-1, copper 0.0273±0.0053μg g-1, manganese 0.004±30.0045μg g-1, nickel 0.0129±0.0045μg g-1.Other research findings are at much higher levels than ours, which indicates that there are no heavy

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