Objective To develop a simple, rapid, accurate method to determine selenium in human hair. Methods Digested in the superior grade pure nitric acid, Ni(NO3)2?6H2O was used as the improver and the content of selenium in the hair samples was determined by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometer. Results Under the designed standard conditions, the detection limit was 0.004 mg/L, in the range of 0.008-0.04 mg/L, the linearity relevance coefficient of absorbency and concentration was 0.996 9, the RSD was 3.7%. At the level of 0.01 mg/L, the recovery rates were 93.8%-98.8%. Conclusion The method is simple, rapid, accurate and is suitable for the determination of selenium in the hair.