Determination of 18 Inorganic Elements in Edible Wild Vegetables from Northeast China by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

An analytical method based on inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry(ICP-MS) has been developed for the simultaneous determination of 18 inorganic elements(Pb, Cd, As, Hg, Cr, Al, Na, Ca, Mg, P, K, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Sb, and Se) in 7 edible wild vegetables growing in northeast China. After the samples were pretreated by microwave digestion, octopole collision-reaction system(ORS) was used to eliminate the polyatomic interferences caused by the matrixes. Sc, Ge, Rh and Bi were used as internal standard elements to compensate matrix effect and signal drift. The concentrations and responses of each element showed a good linear relationship in the range of 0–5000.0 μg/L with correlation coefficients higher than 0.9995. The detection limits for 18 elements were in the range of 0.51–23.00 ng/g. The accuracy and precision of this method were confirmed by comparison with reference standard materials(GBW10015, spinach). The results showed a good agreement between the measured and predicted values for all analytical elements. This method is simple, sensitive and precise and can be applied for the simultaneous determination of multi-elements in wild vegetables.