Page 250 - Inorganic Mass Spectrometry - Fundamentals and Applications

236 Smith

urt? 5 Schematic diagram of gas chromatograph inductively coupled plasma mass
spectrometry (GC-ICP-MS) system. (From Ref. 35.)

not continuous, sample preparation time was reduced to about 10 min, and the au-
thors were able to exploit the ability of microwave digestion to dissolve a large
number of sarnple types and at the same time benefit from the accuracy and pre-
cision that isotope dilution provides. Good agreement between their results and
other techniques was obtained for leaves, air filters, sludge, dust, paint, and urine.

Use of stable isotope dilution to assay elemental concentrations in biological sam-
of
ples has increased markedly in the recent past. Part the reason is that use of ra-
dioactive isotopes previously employed as tracers has declined, and part is that in-
terest in the effect of various elements on biological systems and their fate once
they enter the food chain has increased. This important field is far from the author’s
area of expertise, so what follows should be considered a rather haphazard survey