Assessmentof metal concentrations in different tissues of Persian jird by using statistical method of Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

Different industrial activities produce large amount of metals and thereby affect natural ecosystems, plants and animals. Therefore determining the concentrations of metals due to cumulative effect of them in different tissues of animals are considered to be very important. Due to small size of rodents than largemammals they have higher metabolism than them therefore more exposeds to environmental pollutions. In this study by statistical methodof principal component analysis that is a multivariate statistical method, the concentration of aluminum, copper, zinc, iron, lead, cadmium, cobalt, sodium, magnesium, potassium, calcium, chromium, nickel, strontium in liver, hair, heart and femur of Persian jird were investigated.In summer of 2012, samples were collected by using snap trap in different parts of copper mine. Wet digestion method and ICP-OES instrument were applied for measurement of metal concentrations in different tissues. The concentration of Cd, Pb and Co were reported below the limit detection of instrument. Three principal factors were extracted from principal component analysis which explain about 88% of the total variance. Calcium, sodium, zinc, magnesium, potassium and strontium with the first factor, iron, nickel, chromium and aluminum with the second factor and copper with the third factor show high correlation. All of the metals expect zinc placed in the first factor accumulate more in femur tissue and metals placed in the second and third factors accumulate more in hair tissue.