Ultrapure Water for Determination of Toxic Elements in Environmental Analyses

Dramatic improvement in the sensitivity of analytical instruments over the last decades has changed our understanding of environmental contamination and hazardous effects of metals such as Be, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Cd, Sb, Ba, Hg, Tl, and Pb. This has resulted in a number of regulations and guidelines that establish the maximum acceptable or recommendable concentrations of toxic metals in drinking water, marine water, and wastewater. The requirements instituted by authorities consequently have resulted in a growing need for toxic metal monitoring in environmental laboratories where spectrometry techniques are standard instrumentation recommended for the determination of trace elements.