Determination of lead in blood by tungsten coil electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry

Abstract

A method for the determination of lead in blood using a tungsten coil atomizer is described. A 100 μl volume of the whole blood sample is transferred to a sampler cup containing 100 μl of water plus 300 μl of 0.25% v/v Triton X-100. After lysis of blood cells, 500 μl of 10% w/v trichloroacetic acid is added for protein precipitation and 10 μl of the supernatant solution is automatically delivered into the tungsten coil. The furnace heating program is implemented in 41 s. It is shown by the paired t-test that there is no significant difference at the 5% probability level between results obtained by the proposed method and by using a transversely heated graphite atomizer with a longitudinal Zeeman background correction. Accuracy is also assessed by employing reference materials. The proposed tungsten coil procedure presents a characteristic mass of 15 pg Pb and a detection limit of 1.9 μg Pb dl −1.