Transcript – The Application of Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy for the Analysis of Arsenic Contaminated Rice Leaves

Heavy metals are widespread and there’s lots of different reasons why we want to detect heavy metals in different environmental samples. Even though there are many technologies we can use to find the concentrations of metals in plant tissues, they’re all destructive. They all require solvent. Extraction is not environmentally friendly. So, our goal is to develop a nondestructive technology to analyze heavy metal concentrations to implanted tissues in the technology. What we have tried is called laser induced breakdown spectroscopy. Overall, in the past year, we have optimized the set-up of the equipment and even though we are not completely successful to detect heavy metals, environmental concentrations, we are getting close, I think, with further modification of the parameters. We are hopeful that we will develop a technology which can one day help us to detect the heavy metal concentrations in tissues without solvent extraction.