Metals determination in the whole blood by ICP-OES: a comparison of two digestion procedures

ABSTRACT

The anomalous increases or deficits in the human body can be detected by the development of accurate and sensitive methods for metal quantification in low-level concentrations. Two digestion procedures have been tested on whole blood samples for use in inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry trace metal analysis (ICP-OES). The two procedures are, (microwave digestion with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide), and (simple dilution digestion with nitric acid, N-butanol, and Triton X-100). According to the findings, the overall recoveries of all determining metals for the microwave digestion were in the range of (96%) of the expected levels, whereas for simple dilution digestion they were in the range of (85–88%) of the expected levels. The results showed a significant difference in the recovery ratios in favor of lead (Pd) and cadmium (Cd) between simple dilution and microwave digestion procedures. The findings also show that the content of these metals may be reliably measured using simple dilution and microwave digestion procedures.

Abbreviations: ICP-OES: Induction coupled optical emission spectroscopy; LOD: Limit of detection; LOQ: Limit quantification; AAPCC: American Association of Poison Control Centers; NAUSS: Naif Arab University for Security Sciences; %RSD: Relative standard deviation).

KEYWORDS:

• Pb
• Cd
• whole blood
• microwave
• simple dilution and ICP-OES

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the president of Naif Arab University for Security Sciences, the College of Criminal Justice, and the Department of Forensic Sciences for providing us with full support for this study.

Author contributions

Conceptualization, H.A.A.; methodology, A.K.M.S; investigation, N.A; resources, M.N.J.; data curation, H.A.A.; writing—original draft preparation, H.A.A, and M.N.J; writing—review and editing, A.K.M.S; visualization, H.A.A.; supervision, H.A.A, and A.K.M.S; project administration, A.K.M.S; funding acquisition, H.A.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Sample availability

Samples of blood is available from the Kingdom of Saud Arabia.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Naif Arab university for Security Sciences, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saud Arabia.