Instruments for Elemental Analysis of Herbal Drugs and Formulations

Elemental analysis is crucial in the quality control, safety evaluation, and standardization of herbal drugs, as the presence of toxic heavy metals, trace elements, and mineral content can significantly impact therapeutic efficacy and consumer safety. Atomic absorption spectroscopy is widely employed for quantifying toxic metals such as Pb, Cd, As, and Hg in herbal matrices, owing to its high sensitivity and selectivity for specific elements. Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry offers multi-elemental detection with ultra-trace sensitivity, allowing simultaneous quantification of both essential micronutrients (e.g., Cu, Fe, Zn ) and contaminants. As a whole, these techniques provide complementary capabilities, ensuring comprehensive elemental profiling of herbal drugs to meet regulatory standards, support pharmacological studies, and safeguard public health. This chapter will provide a detailed overview of these methods, their working principles, advantages, limitations, instrumentation, sample preparation in case of herbal drugs, limitations, and applications in the characterization of herbal drugs and formulations.