A Study to Enhance the ICP-OES Detection of Lead by Incorporating Chemical Additives

ICP-OES emission spectrophotometry is an effective technique for the detection of metals in environmental samples. However, the sensitivity of ICP-OES for lead requires improvement. Studies were done in Atomic absorption spectroscopy, with usage of oxidizers and other additives to improve lead by hydride formation but this present study found the influence of an oxidizing agent without any hydride reaction especially in emission spectroscopy, for the first time to the best of our knowledge. In this attempt, four different oxidizers comprising hydrogen peroxide -nitric acid, vanadium pentoxide-nitric acid, potassium permanganate-nitric acid, ammonium persulphate-nitric acid were compared. Then the influencing oxidizer and its reaction conditions were optimized. Then the proposed method was applied for the detection of lead in various real samples like old paint scraps, plastic toys and food packaging material. The most noticeable observation of the additives on detectability of lead is only from the combination of hydrogen peroxide and nitric acid. Therefore the detection of lead with the proposed additives using ICP-OES is concluded to be an improvised and simple method. The results revealed that the maximum amount of lead (23.84 mg/g) was present in old paint scraps among the analyzed samples.