BHVO-2, AGV-2 and BCR-2 Certified Reference Materials in the Method Validation for Zinc Stable Isotope Analysis of Environmental Samples

The intense growth in the number of studies aimed at assessing the contribution of natural and anthropogenic sources of pollution suggests Zn isotope analysis to be promising for identifying sources and pathways of environmental pollution. The method for zinc stable isotope analysis including the chromatographic purification stage and multicollector ICP-MS measurements using the standard-sample bracketing (SSB) technique is described in detail. The procedure validation, as well as the assessment of its performance characteristics (accuracy and precision) for the analysis of environmental samples, was performed using BHVO-2, BCR-2 and AGV-2 USGS certified reference materials. The method described combines both high accuracy and simple implementation demonstrating good agreement with reported data from other laboratories.