A greener, rapid and accurate microwave-assisted hydrogen peroxide digestion method for ICP-OES determination of heavy metals in pet food samples

Abstract

Microwave-assisted hydrogen peroxide digestion (MW-AHPD) method for determination of Cd, As, Pb, Sn, and Cr in South African pet food samples by inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopic (ICP-OES) is reported. Multivariate tools and wheat flour certified reference material (FAP80467) assessed limiting factors and reproducibility of the methods respectively. The resulted optimum conditions were: 200 °C, 40 mins, 0.5 g, and 5 mol/L for temperature, time, sample mass and H2O2 concentration, respectively. The method demonstrated excellent accuracy (96–98%), reproducibility (≤ 2.1%) and high detection limits (0.0675–0.3765 µg/g). Then, real pet food samples made from maize, rice, vegetables, fish, and wheat were digested and concentration levels of Cd, Pb, As, Cr and Sn ranged between 11.2 and 22.6, 6.4–11.9, 3.44–13.4, 0.44–2.98 and 0.18–0.98 µg/g, respectively. The three metal ions were above the minimum tolerable limits (Cd: 10 µg/g, Pb:10 µg/g, As: 12.5 µg/g) for some of the fish and wheat based pet food according to the South African regulatory standard. Furthermore, using the AGREEPrep metric tool the method was assessed and had a score of 0.76, confirming its greenness. These findings present MW-AHPD method as an alternative for determination of heavy metals in pet food by ICP-OES.