GFAAS Determination of Lead,Cadmium and Selenium in Honey Products with Microwave Assisted Sample Digestion

GFAAS with microwave assisted sample digestion was applied to the determination of Pb,Cd and Se in honey products.The sample was first soaked with conc.HNO3 and H2O2,heated to expel oxides of nitrogen,and then digested in a microwave digestor after a supplementary addition of conc.HNO3 and H2O2.Optimum working conditions of the graphite furnace was given and ammonium dihydrogen phosphate was used as matrix modifier in the determination of Pb and Cd,while a mixture of PdCl2 and Mg(NO3)2 was used as matrix modifier in the determination of selenium.Detection limits (3S/N) for Pb,Cd and Se were found to be 11.3,1.9 and 3.7 ng respectively.Samples of honey products were analyzed by the proposed method,and tests for recovery and precision were performed by addition of standards of Pb,Cd and Se to the samples as matrix,giving values of recovery in the ranges of 95.4%-103.8% (for Pb),89.0%-110.0% (for Cd) and 86.8%-96.5% (for Se),with values of RSD′s (n=6) less than 6%.