Determination of Essential and Toxic Elements by ICP-MS in Herbal Medicines

This review synthesizes applications of inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and hyphenated techniques for elemental determination in herbal medicines. The herbal medicine analysis has become increasingly important due to their widespread use in traditional and modern therapies. Due to the elements naturally present or contaminants (toxic elements) in herbal medicines and daily mineral requirements at the microgram level, analytical methods capable of precisely determining elemental concentrations in herbal medicines are essential. Analyses of several species have been conducted using ICP-MS, including rooibos (Aspalathus linearis), tea (Camellia sinensis), cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.), lemon (Citrus limon), turmeric (Curcuma longa L.), etc. The distribution of publications focused on different plant species from 2015 to 2025 is presented in this work. In studies focused on herbal medicine analysis using ICP-MS, sample preparation for elemental determination follows well-established methods, including closed-vessel acid digestion, direct infusion, and extraction of target compounds, among others. Beyond bulk elemental determination, coupling ICP-MS with other complementary analytical techniques, such as laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), liquid chromatography-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LC-ICP-MS), high-performance liquid chromatography-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS), and flow injection-chemical vapor generation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (FI-CVG-ICP-MS), among others, greatly enhances the analytical capabilities for the wide-ranging analysis of herbal medicines. As a result, these approaches facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the chemical, nutritional, and pharmacological properties of herbal medicines, improving quality control, safety assessment, and evaluation of their therapeutic potential.