H. Vanhoe, A REVIEW OF THE CAPABILITIES OF ICP-MS FOR TRACE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS IN BODY-FLUIDS AND TISSUES, Journal of trace elements and electrolytes in health and disease, 7(3), 1993, pp. 131-139
ICP-MS is a powerful analytical technique for the determination of tra
ce and ultra-trace elements in biological materials. Results are given
of the analysis of human serum and of several biological reference ma
terials (bovine liver, milk powder, wheat flour and pig kidney). Becau
se concentrations of many trace metals of interest in these materials
are low, dilution should be kept as limited as possible, although conc
entrations of certain concomitant elements (e.g. Na, K) can be high en
ough to cause significant suppression or enhancement of the ion signal
. The result is that the dissolution procedure becomes a critical step
in the analysis. Microwave digestion, wet digestion with several acid
s (HNO3, HClO4, HF) and simple dilution are compared with each other.
In addition, three possible approaches to overcome these problems are
discussed, namely the internal standardization method, the standard ad
dition method and the isotope dilution method. Furthermore, ICP-MS is
also more susceptible than initially expected to isobaric interference
s arising from the plasma, the acids used in the sample preparation or
the sample itself. These interferences are generally less important a
bove a mass number of 80. Nevertheless, several researchers have inves
tigated the possibility of removing the trace metals from the matrix o
r of using correction formulae based on the isotopic abundances of the
elements. Some of these are evaluated. The need for identifying and q
uantifying chemical species, not just the elements, is well recognized
. One of the reasons why elemental determination may not suffice is th
at different species of the same element may have a different chemical
and toxicological behaviour. Arsenic (As(III), As(V)) and mercury (or
ganomercury) are typical examples. Since ICP-MS offers very low detect
ion limits, it may be applied as a continuous metal-specific detector
after a chromatographic separation of the species. Applications on thi
s subject are discussed.