Heavy metal content of five Chinese drugs

Five kinds of commonly used Chinese drugs were analyzed for the presence of heavy metals, namely, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. These five - Yang Cheng Curing Pill, Po Chai Pills, Wuchi Pai Fung Wan/Phoenix Pills, Tieh Tah Wan, and Yunan Pai Yao - included complex mixtures of plant, animal, and mineral substances, as indicated in their accompanying literature. One gram samples of each drug were acid digested and quantitatively tested for the four heavy metals using the Varian Spectra AA-200 Spectrophotometer. The analyses of the Chinese drugs showed that the five drugs contained arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. The arsenic content of the five drugs ranged from 0.37 mg/L to 1.120 mg/L cadmium content ranged from 0.0072 mg/L to 0.0212 mg/L lead content ranged from 0.134 mg/L to 0.396 mg/L and mercury content ranged from 0.0004 mg/L to 0.0698 mg/L. These values exceeded the standards set by the World Health Organization-International Programme for Chemical Safety (WHO-IPCS) for the four heavy metals