Detection of Total Arsenic and Inorganic Arsenic Content in Health Food Raw Materials from Different Habitats

To investigate the arsenic pollution in health food raw materials and to ensure the quality and safety of health food, the contents of total arsenic and inorganic arsenic in 14 kinds of health food raw materials from 16 habitats were determined by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and high-performance liquid chromatography-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (HPLC/ICP-MS), respectively. The relationship between arsenic concentration and signal intensity is linear with R² higer than 0.9999 in range of 0~100 μg/L. The relative standard deviation (RSD) of detecting results of health food raw materials were from 0.00% to 2.52%, and the precision was satisfactory. The total arsenic content was between (0.0004~0.3900) mg/kg, which did not exceed the health food limit standard. The content of the inorganic arsenic was (0.0003~0.1962) mg/kg. Among them, total arsenic and inorganic arsenic content of Hebei honeysuckle was the highest, the contents of arsenic in ginseng from Jilin, jujube from Xinjiang, walnut from Yunnan, white peony root from Anhui, cornus officinalis from Shanxi and Hericium erinaceus from Fujian were low. The total arsenic contents of ginseng, jujube and walnut meat were the same and the lowest, 0.0004 mg/kg, and the inorganic arsenic contents were also the same, 0.0003 mg/kg. The data of arsenic residues in a variety of health food raw materials were given, which expanded the arsenic content database of health food raw materials and would provide an important reference for arsenic pollution risk assessment.