Bilateral Evaluation of Certified Reference Materials for Macro and Trace Elements in Food as Control Materials for spICP-MS

Published

April 4, 2026

Author(s)

Filip Gregar, Zuzana Gajdosechova, Monique Johnson, Antonio Montoro Bustos, Katrin Loeschner

Abstract

This article examines the suitability of existing certified reference materials (CRMs) for macro and trace elements in food as effective control materials for single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (spICP-MS). The presence of nanoparticles (NPs) in these CRMs was evaluated in parallel at two independent laboratories with a focus on matrices such as wheat flour, mussels, and multielement/multivitamin tablets. In general, this bilateral comparison resulted in a good agreement for the determination of different metal-containing NP diameters and particle size distributions (PSDs) for NIST SRM 1567a (wheat flour), NIST SRM 2976 (mussel tissue), NIST SRM 3294 (multielement tablets), and NRC VITA-1 (low-level multivitamin tablets). We provide evidence regarding the impact of the processing software on the computation of the size limit of detection and, hence, on resulting PSDs. However, despite similar sample preparation and data processing approaches, we report discrepancies in particle number concentration (PNC) results, evidencing that analytical challenges still remain in obtaining accurate and reproducible PNCs. Lastly, a selection of marine animal- and plant-based CRMs was screened for the presence of metal-containing NPs to identify potential candidates suitable for further in-depth quantitative efforts, revealing the presence of large numbers of Al-, Fe-, and Si-containing NPs.

Citation

Talanta

Volume

306

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.talanta.2026.129727

Local Download

Keywords

certified reference material, nanoparticle analysis, spICP-MS, NPs extraction, food matrix, TiO2

Citation

Gregar, F. , Gajdosechova, Z. , Johnson, M. , Montoro Bustos, A. and Loeschner, K. (2026), Bilateral Evaluation of Certified Reference Materials for Macro and Trace Elements in Food as Control Materials for spICP-MS, Talanta, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.talanta.2026.129727, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960817 (Accessed April 7, 2026)