Trace Elements Section
About the Section
The Trace Elements Section was established on 2 July 2003 to centralise all human and physical resources for the determinations of trace elements within the Government Laboratory. The Section mainly provides analytical support to Environmental Chemistry Sections and Food Safety Sections for elemental analysis.
Responsibilities
The Section performs elemental determinations on environmental monitoring programmes, environmental litigations and food contaminations on behalf of the aforesaid Sections within the Government Laboratory.
Quality Assurance
About 20% of samples are for quality control purpose.
The Section participates on a regular basis in the following inter-laboratory comparison exercises:
- WEPAL-QUASIMEME proficiency testing schemes:
- International Plant-Analytical Exchange (IPE)
- International Soil-Analytical Exchange (ISE)
- International Sediment Exchange for Tests on Organic Contaminants (SETOC) - Environmental Resource Associates (ERA) Proficiency Testing Study
- United Kingdom National External Quality Assessment Service (UK NEQAS) proficiency testing programme
- Food Analysis Performance Assessment Scheme (FAPAS)
Key Instruments
The following instruments are used routinely by the Section:
- Single quadrupole and triple quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers
- Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers with various hyphenated techniques:
- Gas chromatography
- High performance liquid chromatography
- Laser ablation - Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer
- Atomic absorption spectrometers with various atomisation techniques:
- Cold vapour atomic absorption spectrometer
- Cold vapour atomic fluorescence spectrometer
- Flame atomic absorption spectrometer
- Graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometer
Single quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer
Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer
Triple quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer