Direct determination of nickel in human plasma by Zeeman-corrected atomic absorption spectrometry

Abstract

A procedure is described for the direct determination of nickel in human plasma in which the samples are diluted before quantitation by means of Zeeman-corrected atomic absorption spectrometry. The limit of detection is 0.09 µg l^–1 and the limit of quantitation 0.31 µg l^–1. For healthy, unexposed subjects, the mean value of nickel in plasma was found to be 0.65 ± 0.35 µg l^–1(n= 6)(range 1.28 ± 0.02 to 0.32 ± 0.05 µg l^–1). The method fails to give the recommended value of 1.8 ± 0.6 µg l^–1 for nickel in the NBS reference material RM 8419, bovine serum. Instead the concentration was found to be 0.48 ± 0.04 µg l^–1(n= 3). It is suggested that the recommended value may be in error.