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Determination of the Non-metallic Elements in Herbal Tea by Inductively Coupled Plasma Tandem Mass Spectrometry

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Abstract

The feasibility of using inductively coupled plasma tandem mass spectrometry (ICP-MS/MS) to overcome spectral overlaps in the determination of non-metallic elements was investigated. The contents of Si, P, S, Cl, Br, and I in herbal tea were determined by using ICP-MS/MS after microwave digestion. In the MS/MS mode, O2 and H2 were consecutively used as reaction gases. Low background equivalent concentration (BEC) and limit of detection (LOD) of analytes were obtained when using O2 mass shift, H2 mass shift, and H2 on-mass methods. The LODs for Si, P, S, Cl, Br, and I were 0.41, 0.048, 0.34, 0.76, 0.055, and 0.007 μg L−1, respectively. Standard reference materials NIST SRM 1515 (apple leaves) and NIST SRM 1547 (peach leaves) were used to evaluate the accuracy of the analytical method. The developed method was used to analyze 20 herbal teas. The ranges of values for Si, P, S, Cl, Br, and I in herbal tea were 236–4100, 1830–4360, 1290–3850, 335–4620, 0.86–8.21, and 0.091–0.65 μg g−1, respectively. The results showed that several non-metallic elements essential for the human body might be obtained by drinking herbal tea.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks the support of Hunan Province traditional Chinese medicine preparation and quality traceability engineering and technology center.

Funding

This work was supported by Provincial Key Project of Hunan Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (No.202092), National key R&D program of China (No. 2018YFC1703400 and 2018YFC1704400), Training Program for Excellent Young Innovators of Changsha (No. kq1802017), and Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (No. cstc2019jcyj-msxmX0705).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Engineerging, Yangtze Normal University, No. 16, Juxian Rd. Lidu Fuling District, Chongqing, 408100, People’s Republic of China

    Liang Fu & Hualin Xie

  2. Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, Hunan Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Changsha, 410013, People’s Republic of China

    Jianhua Huang & Lin Chen

  3. Hunan Key Laboratory of TCM Prescription and Syndromes Translational Medicine Hunan, Changsha, Hunan, 410208, People’s Republic of China

    Jianhua Huang & Lin Chen

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  1. Liang Fu
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  2. Hualin Xie
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  4. Lin Chen
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Correspondence to Hualin Xie or Lin Chen.

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Fu, L., Xie, H., Huang, J. et al. Determination of the Non-metallic Elements in Herbal Tea by Inductively Coupled Plasma Tandem Mass Spectrometry. Biol Trace Elem Res 199, 769–778 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-020-02175-y

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