Aluminum

Aluminum measurements in biological materials are essential to providing an understanding of the effects of this trace metal in health and disease. Many problems have existed with analytical methods for the measurement of aluminium is discussed in this chapter. Aluminum can be measured using gravimetric, titrimetric, photometric, and fluorimetric methods. Interferences from other metals and contamination of reagents with aluminum are major problems with these techniques. X-ray fluorescence is associated with the K-shell electrons of metals. However, one form of X-ray emission spectrograph that of electron probe X-ray micro-analysis, has been used effectively to localize aluminum in both bone and brain tissues. This chapter also explains that neutron activation analysis (NAA) to determine the aluminum content of biological specimens both with and without some chemical processing. Aluminum can be measured by emission spectrometry, using either a nitrous oxide-acetylene flame or argon plasma. Atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) has been widely used to analyse biological materials for aluminum content. Flame techniques, even with the hotter nitrous oxide-acetylene flame, do not perform as well as the flameless methods.