All around the world, people use Chinese herbal medicines for their perceived medical benefits. Some are now worried that arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg) and chromium (Cr) are present in these products. The purpose was to measure these heavy metals in three types of herbal products using two methods, microwave plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (MP-AES) and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Data was obtained for nitric acid sample digestion by preparing and testing methods using standard values. MP-AES was not very sensitive, and its results were not consistent when determining As. By contrast, the results produced by ICP-MS were highly precise and very sensitive. For ICP-MS, using the internal standard (IS) resulted in strong calibration curves (R2>0.9980) and improved reproducibility. What we found shows that ICP-MS is best for trace metal analysis in herbal matrices, while MP-AES appears to have some limitations for this purpose.
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Cui, Z., Sanchez Amaya, J. (2025) Determination of Heavy Metals in Chinese Herbal Medicines Using MP-AES and ICP-MS. Scientific Research Bulletin, 2(2), 30-35. https://doi.org/10.71052/srb2024/EXLG7169