Copper flame photometry

Nixon277 compared atomic absorption spectroscopy, flame photometry, mass spectroscopy, and neutron activation analysis as methods for the determination of some 21 trace elements (<100 ppm) in hard dental tissue and dental plaque silver, aluminum, arsenic, gold, barium, chromium, copper, fluoride, iron, lithium, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, lead, rubidium, antimony, selenium, tin, strontium, vanadium, and zinc. Brunelle 278) also described procedures for the determination of about 20 elements in soil using a combination of atomic absorption spectroscopy and neutron activation analysis. 

Flame Photometry, Atomic Absorption, and Neutron Activation. Comparatively few substances amenable to measurement by these techniques are used therapeutically chief among those that are being sodium, potassium, lithium, calcium, magnesium, zinc, copper, and iron, for all of which one or other of the techniques is the method of choice. 

Conditioning of the manganese oxide suspension with each cation was conducted in a thermostatted cell (25° 0.05°C.) described previously (13). Analyses of residual lithium, potassium, sodium, calcium, and barium were obtained by standard flame photometry techniques on a Beckman DU-2 spectrophotometer with flame attachment. Analyses of copper, nickel, and cobalt were conducted on a Sargent Model XR recording polarograph. Samples for analysis were removed upon equilibration of the system, the solid centrifuged off and analytical concentrations determined from calibration curves. In contrast to Morgan and Stumm (10) who report fairly rapid equilibration, final attainment of equilibrium at constant pH, for example, upon addition of metal ions was often very slow, in some cases of the order of several hours. 

In modem laboratories sodium and potassium are almost exclusively determined by flame photometry and it seems likely that the same will shortly become true of calcium and magnesium and possibly of iron, copper, chromium, manganese, cobalt, lead, and zinc. 

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