Contaminant concentrations in biological materials
Toxic metals, such as As and Cd, can be found in low concentrations in biological tissue. One of the challenges faced while determining toxic metals concentrations is pairing reliable digestion methods to liquefy solid tissue with low instrument detection limits. Using the Agilent 8900 QQQ with O2 as a reaction gas we can simultaneously accurately detect ppb-range As and Cd concentrations as well as ppm-range concentrations of nutrients and major metals.
Our methods allow measurements of 0.004 ppb of As and 0.002 ppb of Cd from bulk digests of less than 0.25 g of dried biological tissue. The accuracy of the extracted digest is confirmed by the 100 ± 10% recovery of certified reference biological materials.