Determining mineral elements in four kinds of grains from Beijing market by ICP-MS simultaneously

Mineral elements are essential components for human health from food, but their contents in wheat, millet, corn and soybean have not been compared. Contents of mineral elements in wheat, millet, corn and soybean from Beijing market of China were detected by ICP-MS. The RSDs (relative standard deviation) range from 0.85% to 3.52% and the detecting limits range from 0.13 to 0.85 μg/L, which showed that this method is accurate and precise to detect mineral elements in grains simultaneously. The data showed that (1) ICP-MS is a simple and precise method to determine many mineral elements in grains simultaneously. (2) Elements followed by descending order in four grains are usually K > Mg > Ca > Fe > Zn > Mn > Cu > Mo > Li, and grains arranged in order from high to low levels of mineral elements are usually soybean > millet > wheat ≈ corn. So we should take in more minor grains, such as soybean and millet on daily diet.