A fast alkaline treatment for cadmium determination in meat samples

This study proposes a simple and fast sample treatment to determine cadmium levels in meat samples (edible offal) of several animal species by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry, GF AAS, as an alternative to the calcination method, currently employed by Official Food Control department of the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply (MAPA). In the proposed method minimum meat sample amount (0.5000 g) was previously hydrated and treated using 0.50 mL of tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH), which provides stable and homogeneous slurry at room temperature in less than 10 min. For the optimization of the sample treatment parameters, fractional and factorial designs were employed. The accuracy of the method was evaluated using reference material, with recovery of 100 ± 7% (n = 7), and limit of quantification of 3.0 μg kg−1, for Cd determination. Applying the proposed method, the meat samples amount used to determine the cadmium concentration was reduced by 20-fold compared to the sample amount required for the calcination conventional method. In fact, the sample preparation time was also reduced by 500-fold in the proposed method compared to the calcination method, which was very favorable for a routine laboratory analysis.