Flow injection inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for the determination of platinum in airborne particulate matter

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) with a flow injection system has been used to determine platinum in airborne particulate matter. The flow injection system had a cation-exchange resin column on-line for trapping major matrix elements and hafnium, which caused suppression of the signal intensity of platinum and a spectral interference by hafnium oxide, respectively. As this method does not require special sample pre-treatment before injection into the ICP-MS instrument, it was considered to be a very practical method. The detection limit was about 0.1 µg l–1 of platinum in a sample solution or 0.005 µg g–1 in airborne particulate matter. The method was applied to several airborne particulate matter samples. The observed concentrations were in the range 0.014–0.184 µg g–1.