# Determination of Essential and Toxic Elements by ICP–MS in Herbal Medicines

## TL;DR

This paper reviews how ICP–MS and related techniques are used to analyze essential and toxic elements in herbal medicines to ensure safety and quality.

## Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive review of ICP–MS applications and hyphenated techniques for elemental analysis in herbal medicines.

## Key findings

- ICP–MS is widely used to determine elemental concentrations in various herbal species like rooibos and turmeric.
- Hyphenated techniques like LA–ICP–MS and LC–ICP–MS enhance the analytical capabilities for herbal medicine analysis.
- The review highlights the importance of precise elemental determination for quality control and safety assessment.

## Abstract

This review synthesizes applications of inductively coupled
plasma–mass
spectrometry (ICP–MS) and hyphenated techniques for elemental
determination in herbal medicines. The herbal medicine analysis has
become increasingly important due to their widespread use in traditional
and modern therapies. Due to the elements naturally present or contaminants
(toxic elements) in herbal medicines and daily mineral requirements
at the microgram level, analytical methods capable of precisely determining
elemental concentrations in herbal medicines are essential. Analyses
of several species have been conducted using ICP–MS, including
rooibos (Aspalathus linearis), tea
(Camellia sinensis), cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.), lemon (Citrus
limon), turmeric (Curcuma longa L.), etc. The distribution of publications focused on different plant
species from 2015 to 2025 is presented in this work. In studies focused
on herbal medicine analysis using ICP–MS, sample preparation
for elemental determination follows well-established methods, including
closed-vessel acid digestion, direct infusion, and extraction of target
compounds, among others. Beyond bulk elemental determination, coupling
ICP–MS with other complementary analytical techniques, such
as laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA–ICP–MS),
liquid chromatography–inductively coupled plasma–mass
spectrometry (LC–ICP–MS), high-performance liquid chromatography–inductively
coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (HPLC–ICP–MS),
and flow injection–chemical vapor generation–inductively
coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (FI–CVG–ICP–MS),
among others, greatly enhances the analytical capabilities for the
wide-ranging analysis of herbal medicines. As a result, these approaches
facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the chemical, nutritional,
and pharmacological properties of herbal medicines, improving quality
control, safety assessment, and evaluation of their therapeutic potential.