Analysis of heavy metals in organisms based on an optimized quantitative LIBS

Organisms including human beings and animals suffer from the intrusion of chemical contaminants, e.g. heavy metals, from a variety of sources such as food, drinking water, breathing, and body contact. Heavy metals can impact strongly on proteins and various enzymes in organisms and deposit in biological tissues, causing chronic toxicosis. Quantitative analysis of the absorption of heavy metals in different organs and tissues of organisms is valuable in environmental biology. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a practical tool for quantitative analysis. Here, an optimized LIBS approach is proposed to analyze the contents of heavy metal elements in various tissues of a contaminated fish sample. In our experiments, some optimal experimental parameters of LIBS have been identified and an internal-standard-based quantitative analysis (ISQA) algorithm has also been adopted to determine the contents of some heavy metals. Experimental results show that heavy metals deposit selectively in certain fish tissues such as liver and gill rather than evenly distribute all over the fish body. The optimized quantitative LIBS approach can be promoted for the environmental biology.