Determination of trace elements in tea by microwave digestion and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy

The contents of five trace elements in tea were determined by microwave digestion and ICPAES.The detection limits of five trace elements were in the range 1～8 μg/L,the recoverives were in the range 88.98%～105.66% and the RSDs in the range 1.95%～4.43%.This method was a rapid,convenient,and highly sensitive method to determine 5 heavy metal elements content in tea samples.The contents of cadmium in randomly sampled 50 tea samples were between 0 mg/kg and 0.856 mg/kg,the contents of chrome were between 0.015 mg/kg and 0.104 mg/kg,the contents of copper were between 5.736 mg/kg and 31.070 mg/kg,the contents of lead were between 0.789 mg/kg and 2.742 mg/kg,the contents of zinc were between 15.246 mg/kg and 43.751 mg/kg.The contents of the five trace elements were within the national requirements.