Ultrasonic leaching of bio-collectors for heavy metal analysis

A Bio Collector - Ultrasonic Leaching Method (BC-ULM) was developed for the analysis of heavy metals (Pb, Cd,Cr, Ni, Cu, Fe and Al) on plant sprouts for the assessment of environmental pollution. Fabaceae Rabinia Pseudoacacia L. and Pinaceae Pinus Sylvertris L. sprouts were chosen as bio-collectors. The bio-collector sprouts were leached using 1% HNO3 solution under ultrasonic effect and the obtained leachate samples were analysed by atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). The accuracy of BC-ULM was tested by comparing obtained results with those of deposition plate (DPM) and ashing (AM) methods which both are of practical use. Our findings show that BC-ULM and AM results are in agreement. Average heavy metal pollution factors of BC-ULM and DPM are well comparable with each other. Maximum and minimum heavy metal polluted stations were determined with no difference at all for all three methods. The average RSD % of BC-ULM varied between 5.5-8.4 % for n=13, depending on the analyte and the nature of the sample. Again, average RSD % was obtained between 1.7-8.0 % (n=9) and 3.4-9.8 % (n=11) for AM and DPM, respectively. The precision variance between BC-ULM and AM was not significant at 0.05 probability for all metals except copper.