Determination of Pd, Rh, Pt, Au in road dust by electrothermal vaporization inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry with slurry sampling

•Analysis of road dusts for Pd, Rh, Pt and Au by USS-ETV-ICP-MS is reported.•To avoid sample dissolution or mineralization of dusts ETV-ICP-MS was employed.•APDC modifier improved the sensitivities in ICP-MS analysis.•The spectral interferences were alleviated using ETV sample introduction.

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry coupled with ultrasonic slurry sampling electrothermal vaporization (USS-ETV-ICP-MS) has been applied to determine Pd, Rh, Pt and Au in 0.5% m/v slurries of several road dust samples. 2% m/v ammonium pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (APDC) was used as the modifier to enhance the ion count. The influence of instrument operating conditions, slurry preparation and interferences on the ion count was reported. This method has been applied to the determination of Pd, Rh, Pt and Au in BCR 723 Road Dust and NIST SRM 2709 San Joaquin Soil reference materials and two road dust samples collected locally. The analysis results of the standard reference materials agreed with the certified values. Precision between sample replicates was better than 10% for all the determinations. The method detection limits estimated from standard addition curves were 0.9, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.4 ng g−1 for Pd, Rh, Pt and Au, respectively, in original dust samples.

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