Determination of lead in blood by tungsten coil electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry

A method for the determination of lead in blood using a tungsten coil atomizer is described. A 100 mu l volume of the whole blood sample is transferred to a sampler cup containing 100 mu l of water plus 300 mu l of 0.25% v/v Triton X-100. After lysis of blood cells, 500 mu l of 10% w/v trichloroacetic acid is added for protein precipitation and 10 mu l of the supernatant solution is automatically delivered into the tungsten coil, The furnace heating program is implemented in 41 s. It is shown by the paired t-test that there is no significant difference at the 5% probability level between results obtained by the proposed method and by using a transversely heated graphite atomizer with a longitudinal Zeeman background correction. Accuracy is also assessed by employing reference materials. The proposed tungsten coil procedure presents a characteristic mass of 15 pg Pb and a detection limit of 1.9 mu g Pb dl(-1).