Abstract: The coal samples were treated with a mixture of HNO3-HF (2+1) by high-pressure closed digestion, and the amounts of 17 metal elements (i.e. V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Se, Mo, Sb, Ba, Pb, Sc, La, Ce, Nd and Th) were determined by ICP-MS. The matrix interference was eliminated by internal standard method. The detection limits (3S/N) were in the range of 12-63 μg·kg-1. The proposed method was validated using coal standard reference material CLB-1.The results were consistent with the certified values, RSD (n=6) were less than 5% with recovery in the range of 92.0%-110%.