To precisely determine the abundances of fifty-two elements found within natural water samples, with mass fractions down to fg g -1 level, we have developed a method which combines freeze-drying pre-concentration (FDC) and isotope dilution internal standardisation (ID-IS). By sublimation of H 2 O, the sample solution was reduced to < 1/50 of the original volume.To determine element abundance with accuracy better than 10%, we found that for solutions being analysed by mass spectrometry the HNO 3 concentration should be > 0.3 mol l -1 to avoid hydrolysis. Matrix-affected signal suppression was not significant for the solutions with NaCl concentrations lower than 0.2 and 0.1 cg g -1 for quadrupole ICP-MS and sector field ICP-MS, respectively. The recovery yields of elements after FDC were 97-105%. The detection limits for the sample solutions prepared by FDC were ≤ 10 pg g -1 , except for Na, K and Ca. Blanks prepared using FDC were at pg-levels, except for eleven elements (Na, Mg, Al, P, Ca, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu and Zn). The abundances of fifty-two elements in bottled drinking water were determined from five different geological sources with mass fractions ranging from the fg g -1 to lg g -1 level with high accuracy.