Determination of trace metals in vegetables using ICP-MS

The aim of this research was to evaluate the total content of heavy metals in selected and frequently ‎used vegetables. Ten samples of the most common diet vegetables (chard, celery, garden cress, ‎spinach, Egyptian leek, wild mint, spring onion, arum, mallow, sunflower) were collected from the ‎local markets in Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The heavy metals were extracted from ‎vegetable samples by microwave-assisted acid digestion utilizing nitric acid/hydrogen peroxide, ‎followed by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to determine the ‎concentrations of As, Cd, Cr, Cu and Pb in the samples. The concentration ranges of heavy metals ‎found for the ten types of edible vegetables investigated are as follows (in µg g-1): As, 0.198-0.436; ‎Cd,