Toxic Metals Chelation by 18-Crown-6 Ethers in Multiple Solutions and Quantification by Spectroscopic Techniques

Toxic metals exposure is a significant problem for military personnel, with increasingly prevalent embedded fragments due to improvised explosive devices.Current biomonitoring for military personnel with embedded fragments is centralized, limiting capacity and availability.Importantly, monitoring using this approach begins long after peak exposure, indicating a need for portable, multiplexed toxic metals detection that can be carried out closer to the time of exposure with increased frequency.Small molecule chelators such as crown ethers are known to selectively bind metal cations in solution.Crown ethers possess selective chelation of multiple metal ions and is dependent on molecular structure, solution properties, and other parameters.This selectivity extends to multiple ions and depends on not only molecular structure, but also the solution properties.The goal of this study is to assess the potential for metal sensing in solution as a function of crown ether structure and solution properties with future use for toxic metal sensing from embedded fragments as a potential translational objective.