Transferability of blood lead determinations by furnace atomic absorption spectrophotometry and continuum background correction.

We have examined and proved feasible the transfer of a method for blood lead determination, developed and optimized for a Zeeman-corrected instrument, to a continuum-corrected furnace atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Numerous reference materials analyzed with the continuum-corrected instrument gave results within 10 micrograms/L (0.05 mumol/L) at low values and varied by < 6% at values > 200 micrograms/L (0.97 mumol/L). Forty-four routine human blood specimens were analyzed by the same method with both continuum- and Zeeman-corrected instrumentation, and gave results that agreed within about the same limits as found with reference materials. The day-to-day precision was about 1/5 the accuracy results. The detection limit was approximately 5 micrograms/L (0.025 mumol/L).