With the expansion of the global nutraceutical market, the spotlight on the analysis of its raw materials is ever increasing. Testing of nutraceutical products for heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury has gained utmost importance. Extremely low levels of these heavy metals like mercury, in nutraceuticals make its analysis challenging. Analytical
chemists have to rely on techniques like CVAA and ICP-MS, which involve a time consuming and labor intensive sample preparation step.

Direct mercury analysis on the other hand, as described by EPA 7473, is an alternative method to traditional techniques that requires no sample prep and delivers results in as little as 6 minutes per sample. This makes it significantly faster with comparable or better recoveries than CVAA and ICP-MS.