Determination of silver in nano-plastic food packaging by microwave digestion coupled with inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry or inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

The detection of silver in nano-plastic food packaging by microwave digestion coupled with either inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) or inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was investigated. Microwave digestion was optimised by trialling different acid mixtures. Both ICP-AES and ICP-MS showed good reproducibility, repeatability and recovery. For ICP-AES the limit of detection of the method (LODm) was 25.0 µg g(-1), the limit of detection of the instrument (LODi) was 30.0 ng ml(-1), the linear range was 0.10-10.0 µg ml(-1). The average recoveries for blank samples spiked with silver at 100, 250 and 500 µg g(-1) ranged from 82.53% to 87.60%, and the relative standard deviations (RSDs) were from 1.79% to 8.30%. For ICP-MS analysis the LODm was 0.75 µg g(-1), the LODi was 0.04 ng ml(-1), the linear range was 0.20-500.0 ng ml(-1), the RSDs were 2.26-4.79%, and the recoveries were 78.09-92.72% (spiked concentrations of 2.5, 5.0 and 10.0 µg g(-1)). These results indicate that the proposed method could be employed to analyse silver in nano-plastic food packaging.