A quality assurance programme for the determination of selenium in foods by instrumental neutron activation analysis

摘要

Selenium is unevenly distributed through the biosphere. the levels, species and bioavailability of selenium in foods depend greatly on the geochemical environment in which they are grown. Variation in geochemical conditions can not only lead to certain diseases in animals but also influence the selenium body burden in humans. For these reasons, there is an increasing interest in monitoring selenium levels in foods and diets. A quality assurance programme has been developed for the determination of low levels of selenium in foods and diets by cyclic and pseudo-cyclic instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) using the short-lived (half-life=17.4 s) ~(77)Se~m nuclide. Both conventional and anti-coincidence gamma ray spectrometry techniques have been employed. Pseudo-cyclic INAA in conjunction with anti-coincidence counting has been found to provide the most reliable results. Internal and external quality assessments have been done using a number of parameters.