Chlorella is typical green algae that breed widely in lakes, rivers and ponds. In recent years, environmental pollution of the aquatic ecosystem by heavy metals and organic compounds is having adverse effects on animals, plants, fish and also on human health. Therefore an urgent requirement is to identify and monitor such substances in the hydrosphere. Besides its value for monitoring water pollution, Chlorella CRM will also be of use in basic studies since chlorella has already been used extensively as a research material. The material was prepared from spray-dried chlorella (Chlorella pyrenoidosa) obtained from a commercial source. The chlorella powder was blended and bottled.
Certified values are provided for K, Ca,Mg, Fe, Mn, Sr, Zn, Cu, Co, while reference values are reported for P, Pb, Cd and Sc. In order to estimate homogeneity of the material, the variation of elemental content in several bottles was examined by acid-dissolution followed by inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry analysis. Eight bottles were randomly selected from the lot of 920 bottles and 3 aliquots were taken from each bottle. For the elements P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn, Sr, Zn and Cu, variations due to sample variability were estimated to be less than 1% (as relative standard deviation), indicating that the prepared Chlorella satisfies the homogeneity criteria for a reference material. keywords: Biological material, Plant material, Agricultural food products, Foodstuff, trace elements , heavy metals |
