Determination of Mercury in Ayurvedic Dietary Supplements That Are Not Rasa Shastra Using the Hydra-C Direct Mercury Analyzer

Table 6

Comparison and practical considerations for using Hydra C versus ICP-MS.

Hydra C	ICP-MS
No Sample digestion; (lower cost per analysis)	Need sample digestion
No Hazardous chemical or waste	Hazardous chemical or waste
All of the Hg in each sample is collected on the amalgam prior to analysis	Hg can be lost from aqueous samples during digestion
About 5 minutes/sample	About 30 min/sample
All the Hg gets to the detector, so sensitivity is good.	ICP-MS system must provide very high sensitivity to compensate for Hg low degree of ionization in the plasma
Decrease the chance of contamination	Chance of contamination during the digestion process
No carry over effect or loss of sample (no tubing required)	Significant carry over effect and loss of sample via tubing.