Determination of lead at ultratrace levels
Lead is a toxic heavy metal harmful to our digestive, immune and nervous systems following ingestion or inhalation. Therefore, the development of new methodologies to detect lead even at ultratrace levels is necessary.
A compact trap and atomizer device to pre-concentrate lead and determine ultratrace levels has been developed in the past. However, a strong interference of bismuth during the lead pre-concentration procedure is observed. To explain the bismuth interference, Jan Kratzer and colleagues from the Institute of Analytical Chemistry of the ASCR, Czech Republic, quantify the trapping and volatilization efficiency of lead with a new radiotracer employing a Pb radioactive indicator. This recent study improves the understandings of the currently developed quarz trap atomizer device and demonstrates that the radiotracer approach is a powerful tool in method development.
To know more about this work, please access the link below. This paper will be free to read until February 28th.
Hydride generation – in-atomizer collection of Pb in quartz tube atomizers for atomic absorption spectrometry – a 212Pb radiotracer study
Jan Kratzer , Stanislav Musil , Miloslav Vobecký and Jiří Dědina
J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2013, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2JA30263B
