A trace amount of silver was determined by an electrically heated quartz tube atomization (QTA) atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) with continuous-flow gas-phase sample introduction technique by use of both tartaric and hydrochloric acids as reaction media, and potassium tetrahydroborate (III) as a reductant. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the best attainable detection limit for silver at 328.07 nm was 0.4 ng mL^-1. The instrumental precision expressed as the relative standard deviation (RSD) from ten replicate measurements of 50 ng mL ¹ for silver by QTA-AAS was 4.0%. After the effects of diverse elements on the determination of silver were examined, this method was applied to the determination of low concentrations of silver in steels. The results obtained by the present method were in good agreement with the certified values.