Hello,
I was recently trained on ICP-MS so I'm still learning everything, and had a question about my verification standard (CalStd).We have 7 standard we work with, 0 ppb (blank), 0.25 ppb, 1 ppb, 2 ppb, 5 ppb, 10 ppb, and our verification standard (which should have a concentration of 5 ppb), all of which include the metals As, Cd, Hg, and Pb. In the screenshot below, which is a spreadsheet from when I exported masshunter results, the concentration of the first 6 standards are fine (for each metal, but I only have Cd and Hg for reasons I'll ask about in a little bit). But, when looking at the verification standard, although Cd concentration looks fine (As and Pb are fine too), Hg concentration is super high. We look for 200 Hg, 201 Hg, and 202 Hg, and each of them have around 6.1 to 6.4 ppb in concentration. We use Agilent standards for Standards 1 through 5, and a different brand for our verification, both are made the same way so I'm not sure why there's such a high mercury concentration for only the verification standard.
- Will this affect results? How badly can this affect results?
- How can one fix this?
