Atomic Spectrometry Update—Clinical and Biological Materials, Foods and Beverages

Abstract

The references included in this the eighth ASU under the heading of Clinical and Biological Materials, Foods and Beverages, are from 92/C339 to 93/C909. As noted last year, there is now an increasing range of multi-element techniques being used and, while important, ICP-MS does not dominate as it once was suspected that it would. This year has seen a growth in the use of stable isotopes with measurements generally made by ICP-MS. However, a particular development has been with accelerator MS for the determination of ²⁶Al. This has provided, for the first time, a tracer for Al metabolism experiments. A symposium on speciation in biological analysis provided the stimulus to much new work, particularly with As and Hg, and many of the papers from the meeting are included in this review. Several of these and other papers made use of Fl techniques, a develpment which was enhanced by a new commercial Fl system for AAS. Procedures for preconcentration, either separate from or linked to the Fl technique, featured in a number of reports. Aluminium no longer stands out as the single element of greatest interest. As already seen, there are many entries for As and Hg, but the main features are the increased number of Se papers and the larger overall number of elements which has been covered.