ATOMIC SPECTROMETRY UPDATE - CLINICAL AND BIOLOGICAL-MATERIALS, FOODSAND BEVERAGES

The references included in this the eighth ASU under the heading of Cl inical and Biological Materials, Foods and Beverages, are from 92/C339 to 93/C909. As noted last year, there is now an increasing range of m ulti-element techniques being used and, while important, ICP-MS does n ot dominate as it once was suspected that it would. This year has seen a growth in the use of stable isotopes with measurements generally ma de by ICP-MS. However, a particular development has been with accelera tor MS for the determination of Al-26. This has provided, for the firs t time, a tracer for Al metabolism experiments. A symposium on speciat ion in biological analysis provided the stimulus to much new work, par ticularly with As and Hg, and many of the papers from the meeting are included in this review. Several of these and other papers made use of Fl techniques, a development which was enhanced by a new commercial F l system for AAS. Procedures for preconcentration, either separate fro m or linked to the Fl technique, featured in a number of reports. Alum inium no longer stands out as the single element of greatest interest. As already seen, there are many entries for As and Hg, but the main f eatures are the increased number of Se papers and the larger overall n umber of elements which have been covered.