Digestion of Liver Samples

Various organs in animals have the ability to accumulate heavy metals. An example is mercury (Hg) in shark liver. A commercial application is monitoring Cadmium in sheep liver which can be used for paté usage.

The universal limit set for Cadmium is lower than 1ppm in food samples.

A digestion method was developed allowing for improved detection limits in liver samples where the standard method of digesting 0.3 grams of sample in 100ml of DI water was increased to 0.7 grams. This involved using special captive digestion vessels with low mercury effect material.