Background: Traditional medicine mainly of herbal origin is widely used all around the world. Heavy metal contamination in such products is frequently reported. Accumulation of heavy metals in the human body leads to various health hazards. Thus, precise determination for such contaminants is required for safety assurance. Sample preparation is a significant step in spectroscopic analysis to achieve reliable and accurate results. Wet digestion methods are basically used for the dissolution of herbal product samples prior to elemental analysis.

Heavy metal pollution is a serious environmental problem. The presence of such metals in different areas of an ecosystem subsequently leads to the contamination of consumable products such as dietary and processed materials. Accurate monitoring of metal concentrations in various samples is of importance in order to minimize health hazards resulting from exposure to such toxic substances. For this purpose, it is essential to have a general understanding of the basic principles for different methods of elemental analysis. This article provides an overview of the most sensitive techniques of elementalanalysis such as atomic absorption/emission spectrometry, mass spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence, voltametry, and nuclear techniques. In addition, the article addresses some applications in a range of sample matrices.

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Purpose: To determine the content of arsenic (As)

Concentrations of heavy metals (HMs) in the tissues and saliva extracts of leeches (Hirudinaria manillensis) collected from Cheneh Lake, Terengganu, Malaysia were investigated. Concentrations of HMs like Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Iron (Fe), Manganese (Mn), Nickel (Ni), Lead (Pb), Selenium (Se) and Zinc (Zn) were revealed by utilising Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS). Nearly all the examined HMs concentrations in the lake water were noted to be higher compared to the Maximum Permissible Limits (MPL) as per Interim National Water Quality Standards for Malaysia (INWQS). Moreover, traces of HMs were discovered in tissues and saliva extracts of leeches. Such quantities may pose a health hazard to the patients upon an instant application of leeches on their skin. In this work, a novel technique was presented to decrease the level of metals in leech saliva by espousing a frequent washing process involving deionized or non-chlorinated water for three weeks. This process was extremely effectual in considerably decreasing HMs concentrations (P<0.05), particularly Cd level (up to 99.7%) in saliva and Pb level (up to 92.38%) in tissues. Thus, a constant washing process might aid in harmless utilization of leeches for different conventional biomedical practices.