Determination of lead in biological materials by constant-temperature electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry

A comparison is made between a platform-equipped Perkin-Elmer HGA-500 and a recently designed two-step constant-temperature graphite furnace with respect to susceptibility to interference effects as well as attainable detection limits. It is shown that larger quantities of biological samples can be used with the constant-temperature furnace without suppressing the analyte signal, resulting in lower detection limits. Materials studied include NBS Olyster Tissue and Bovine Liver, and human lung tissue and human blood.