Recovery studies of selenium using dry ashing procedure with ashing aid

A previously reported dry ashing procedure for the decomposition of marine samples prior to arsenic determination is demonstrated to be equally applicable to the analysis of selenium. Quantitative recovery of selenium as inorganic or organic compounds in a variety of plants and animal tissues is demonstrated using 75Se tracer and X-ray fluorescence techniques. The dry ashing procedure is simpler than the official AOAC method, which uses a mixture of H2SO4, HNO3 and HC10(4).