Determination of lead and cadmium in food and blood by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry: a comparison with graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry

To compare inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GF-AAS) as the method for determining lead and cadmium in the human diet and blood, 418 diet homogenate samples and the same number of blood samples were collected from Chinese and Japanese women and were analyzed by the two methods. The results showed that our ICP-MS method is precise and accurate, being comparable to the GF-AAS method established previously. The ICP-MS method is simple and fast spending only one-tenth of the time necessary for GF-AAS and allows simultaneous analyses of lead and cadmium with low detection limits. When applied to actual sample analysis, however, ICP-MS results tend to be 10–20% lower than GF-AAS results in the analysis of lead in the diet and blood and cadmium in blood. This is possibly due to some interference in ICP-MS and matrix of samples. As the ICP-MS results could be mathematically corrected to be equivalent to the GF-AAS results, we conclude that this ICP-MS method can be used as a routine analytical method for the determination of lead and cadmium in human diet and blood samples.