A newly designed high-pressure wet digester and its application to trace element analysis in human body

Summary A high-pressure digestive vessel was designed and used in the pretreatment of samples of human body materials. The method has been used in combination with neopolarographic anodic stripping voltammetry, oscillographic anodic stripping voltammetry and graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry for trace analysis of lead in blood, hair and nails. The percentage of recovery amounted to 97.1–99.1%. The analytical results obtained by pretreatment with the device demonstrated that the sensitivity and accuracy of analysis can be effectively increased by employing our device.