Abstract

There is no doubt analytical laboratories have an essential role to play in environmental protection through monitoring of pollutants in air, water or soil. Research on trace elements and the effects of their ingestion on human health is also often seen in scientific literature. The term heavy metal is often used to refer to the group of metals and semimetals (metalloids) that have been associated with contamination and potential toxicity or ecotoxicity. Environmental medium is exposed to a number of pollutants including toxic heavy metals by various natural and anthropogenic activities. Consequently, heavy metal contaminated environmental has the potential to pose severe health risks and hazards to humans as well as other living creatures of the ecosystem through various routes of exposure such as direct ingestion, contaminated drinking ground water, food crops, contact with contaminated soil and through food chain. Therefore, it is mandatory to explore various techniques that could efficiently determine the occurrence of heavy metals in different environmental samples. A number of methods have been developed for the quantification and monitoring of analyzed matrices. In this work summarized development and application of different analytical methods and techniques, from kinetic-UV-Vis spectrometry, ICPOES to ICP-MS to analyze heavy metals, in different real samples, from an environmental point of view.