Contents and Dissolutions of 8 Heavy Metals in Before and After Decoctions of Traditional Chinese Medicines by ICP-MS

A method was established for the determination of 8 heavy metals such as Pb,Cd,Cr,Cu,As,Hg,Sb,Sn in five traditional Chinese medicines and their respective decoctions by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry(ICP-MS) with microwave digestion.The microwave digestion conditions and the parameters of ICP-MS were optimized.Detection limits of all elements were lower than or equal to 0.003μg/L,and precisions were between 1.3% and 3.0%.The recoveries for Chinese traditional medicines were between 93.6%—100.2%,and recoveries of decoctions were between 94.2%—103.5%.Before and after decocting,the extractive rates were less than 33.33%,which showed the heavy metal elements were difficult to decoct.