The development of flow injection technique for rapid uranium determination in urine samples

Much attention has been paid to precise and rapid determination of actinide elements in various biological samples. The importance of actinide bioassay is caused by their radiological hazard due to the internal exposure. The present research is devoted to the development of a flow injection extraction chromatography (FI-EC) as an analytical procedure for rapid determination of uranium in urine by ICP-MS. The developed FI-EC-ICPMS system includes automated radiochemical separation based on the use of UTEVA·Spec extraction chromatography resin followed by immediate ICP-MS measurement. Microwave digestion is applied to decompose urine samples prior to the FI-EC-ICPMS measurement. The system automatically removes matrix substances, thus, overcomes problem of matrix effect during ICP-MS measurement. Only few cm³ of urine are required for a single uranium analysis because of a low detection limit of the ICP-MS method. The developed FI-EC-ICPMS system is fully automated and virtually does not require handwork. By the FI-EC-ICPMS method uranium determination could be performed within 8 min per urine sample. (author)