Determination of Heavy Metals in Vegetables by Microwave Digestion/Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy

A microwave digestion/inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) method was presented for the determinations of Zn,Pb,Cu and Cd in vegetables. The detection limits of the method for the elements varied from 0.006 to 0.018 mg/L,with relative standard deviations between 0.17% and1.76%,and the spike recovery ratios for them were in the range from 99.00% to 102.95%. The actual applications demonstrate that this method is sensitive,and that the leaf vegetables can adsorb more heavy metals than fruit vegetables such as eggplant.