QUANTIFICATION OF INORGANIC CONSTITUENTS IN BRAZILIAN HUMAN MILK BY ICP OES

A fast procedure to determine essential and toxic metals in Brazilian human milk by ICP OES is proposed. Mature and colostrum human milk samples were mineralized using closed-pressurized and high-performance microwave digestion oven. Aqueous calibration was performed for all analytes investigated. A reference material, Infant Formula, was analyzed to test the accuracy of the proposed methodology. Recovery rates ranged between 83 and 117%. The precision of the method was better than 3.3% (R.S.D.) for all analytes investigated. Higher concentrations, on average, of the metals studied in the colostrum human milk could be found in relation to the mature human milk.