Comparative study on the determination of heavy metals in soil by XRF and ICP-MS

Abstract

The contents of Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Pb and Cd in standard soil for composition (GBW07403) and two soil samples were determined by XRF and ICP-MS, respectively. The results showed that XRF had higher precision than ICP-MS in the determination of seven metals in standard soil, but the relative errors of Ni, As and Cd were larger, up to -33%∼22.7%. XRF and ICP-MS were used to determine contents of seven kinds of heavy metals in 2 soil samples, respectively. Both methods had high precision. F test showed that there was no significant difference in precision between the two methods except for Cd in No. 2 soil. The t test showed that there were significant differences by the two methods for the determination of other heavy metals except for Cd and Cu (P ≤0.05). Although the method of XRF was fast and simple, its accuracy and comparison with other experimental methods need to be further studied due to the sample matrix effect.