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Heavy metals contaminate our food and drinking water by soil and air pollution via pesticides, industrial waste or accidental release. Plants uptake metals from the environment, depositing them throughout the plant including flowers, pollen and fruit. In some cases, these are beneficial minerals necessary for bone structure and cognitive health, but when grown in contaminated soil heavy metals can contaminate our food sources as well. Some forms of these heavy metals have more toxic forms, like methylmercury or hexavalent chromium when compared to other mercury or chromium forms. ICP-MS alone cannot identify concentrations of these more harmful species, as a total value is collected for the element. We have paired separation by HPLC followed by ICP-MS to better understand the concentrations of the more harmful forms contaminating our food and water. Demonstrated will be examples including the separation of inorganic mercury and methyl mercury in 5 minutes, followed by detection using ICP-MS. All tested elements were tested for sensitivity at 10% and 20% of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India and reported excellent repeatability and RSD below 3%.
