Electrothermal vaporization inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry for the determination of Cr, Cu, Cd, Hg and Pb in rice flour

Ultrasonic slurry sampling (USS)–electrothermal vaporization (ETV) dynamic reaction cell™ (DRC) inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) has been applied to determine Cr, Cu, Cd, Hg and Pb in rice samples. The influences of instrument operating conditions and slurry preparation on the ion signals were reported. Ascorbic acid was used as a modifier to enhance the ion signals. The background ions at the chromium masses were reduced in intensity significantly by using 0.4 ml min −1 NH 3 as reaction cell gas in the dynamic reaction cell while a q value of 0.6 was used. Since the sensitivities of Cr, Cu, Cd, Hg and Pb in rice flour slurry and aqueous solution were quite different, standard addition and isotope dilution methods were used for the determination of Cr, Cu, Cd, Hg and Pb in these rice samples. This method has been applied to the determination of Cr, Cu, Cd, Hg and Pb in NIST SRM 1568a rice flour reference material and two rice samples purchased from the market. The analytical results for the reference material agreed with the certified values. The results for the rice samples for which no reference values were available were also found to be in good agreement between the isotope dilution and standard addition methods. The method’s detection limits estimated from the standard addition plots were about 0.44, 1.7, 0.4, 0.53 and 0.69 ng g −1 for Cr, Cu, Cd, Hg and Pb, respectively, in the original rice flour.