Determination of toxic heavy metals in rice samples using ultrasound assisted emulsification microextraction combined with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy.

A straightforward and efficient method was developed by ultrasound assisted emulsification microextraction (USAEME) combined with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP/OES) to trace some toxic heavy metal ions in eight select farmed and four select imported rice samples. In this study, carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) and 1-(2-pyridylazo)2-naphthol (PAN) were used as the extraction solvent and complexing reagent, respectively. The extraction parameters were optimized by means of a central composite design (CCD). Detection and quantification limits were set to be between 0.02 and 0.08 µg L-1 and 0.07-0.30 µg L-1, respectively. The accuracy of our method was further verified against two certified reference materials namely NCS ZC73029 and NIES No 10-b. While no trace of contaminations was found in some rice samples (Tarom, Hashemi, Sadri, Khazar and one imported sample), others such as Kazemi, Jamshidi, Dom Siah, Guilanehand and three of the imported samples were considerably polluted.