Effect of wastewater sample pre-treatment on determination of selected heavy metals using ICP-MS method

Abstract

Polychlorinated substances, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals and pesticides are among the priority even at low concentrations. The problem, however, is that such low concentrations are impossible to measure using most available methods. This research focused on the determination of selected priority substances - heavy metals, namely lead and cadmium, in which the determination of Pb and Cd in wastewater by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) was preceded by water sample pre-treatment. The paper deals with the influence of the pre-treatment on the resulting measured values. Two processes were selected as pre-treatment processes. The first pre-treatment procedure was a simple filtration using a filter paper for moderate filtration. As the second procedure, we applied decomposition of the sample by nitric acid in the open system. The pre-treated wastewater samples were subsequently examined using ICP-MS. Based on the obtained results, we can conclude that decomposition of the sample by nitric acid in the open system is a more suitable pre-treatment method for water samples.