Application of ICP-OES to the Determination of Barium in Blood and Urine in Clinical and Forensic Analysis

Abstract

Exposure to barium (Ba) mostly occurs in the workplace or from drinking water, but it may sometimes be due to accidental or intentional intoxication. This paper presents a reliable, sensitive method for the determination of Ba in blood and urine: inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) after microwave digestion of samples. The overall procedure was checked using Seronorm Whole Blood L-2, Trace Elements Urine and spiked blood and urine samples (0.5-10 µg/mL of Ba). The accuracy of the whole procedure (relative error) was 4% (blood) and 7% (urine); the recovery was 76-104% (blood) and 85-101% (urine). The limits of detection and quantification (Ba λ = 455.403 nm) were 0.11 and 0.4 µg/L of Ba, respectively; precision (relative standard deviation) was below 6% at the level of 15 µg/L of Ba for blood. This method was applied to a case of the poisoning of a man who had been exposed at the workplace for over two years to powdered BaCO3, and who suffered from paralysis and heart disorders. The concentrations of Ba, in μg/L, were 160 (blood), 460 (serum) and 1,458 (urine) upon his admission to the hospital, and 6.1 (blood) and 4.9 (urine) after 11 months (reference values: 3.34 ± 2.20 µg/L of Ba for blood and 4.43 ± 4.60 µg/L of Ba for urine).

Thallium - poisoner’s poison: An overview and review of current knowledge on the toxicological effects and mechanisms

“…In addition, laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-sector field-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-SF-MS) was used to determine the Tl concentration in the bone of someone who was killed by Tl poisoning 38 years ago ( Hann et al, 2005 ). Inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) is also used for detecting Tl in biological samples, with a dynamic range from ppb to ppm ( Lech and Lachowicz, 2009 , Gupta et al, 2023 ). Microwave plasma-atomic emission spectrometry, which is a recently introduced technique for multi-element analysis with a low running cost ( Fujihara and Nishimoto, 2020 , Fujihara and Nishimoto, 2023 ), is also expected to be applied to Tl analysis in biological samples.…”

“…For tissue analysis, acid digestion by concentrated HNO 3 (65 %) with or without H 2 O 2 (30 %) is performed by heating, using a microwave, heat block, and so on ( Tanaka et al, 1978 , Hann et al, 2005 , Das et al, 2006 , Di Candia et al, 2020 ). For example, Lech and Lachowicz (2009) performed acid digestion with a microwave by adding 4 mL of HNO 3 and 1 mL of H 2 O 2 to blood (1 mL), urine (2–8 mL), and tissue (1–2 g) and then heating at 250 W (1 min), 0 W (2 min), and 250, 400, and 600 W (5 min each). Following digestion, the samples were diluted to 10 or 25 mL.…”

Analysis of urine by MIP-OES: challenges and strategies to correct matrix effects

“…Therefore, the effects caused by the urine matrix in instrumental methods, such as ICP-OES and ICP-MS, have already been reported and are well established in the literature along with a number of correction strategies. [10][11][12] However, to the best of our knowledge, such a study has not yet been carried out for microwave-induced plasma optical emission spectrometry (MIP-OES), so the matrix effects on the direct analysis of urine in nitrogen plasma remain unknown.…”

Elemental Analysis of Human Blood Serum by Microwave Plasma—Investigation of the Matrix Effects Caused by Sodium Using Model Solutions

“…This interference can generally be reduced by increasing the microwave power [12]. The most widely applied technique to determine the elemental concentration of human body fluids is ICP-OES and ICP-MS (inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) [29,30]. The robustness and matrix effect for the ICP have been heavily investigated while the MP is a relatively new technique in its recent form.…”