Background: DBS have become a clinical specimen especially adequate for establishing home-based collection protocols. In this work, high-resolution continuum source graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry is evaluated for the direct monitoring of Pb in DBS, both as a quantitative tool and a screening method.
Methodology: The development of the screening model is based on the establishment of the unreliability region around the threshold limits, 100 or 50 μg l(-1). More than 500 samples were analyzed to validate the model.
Conclusion: The screening method demonstrated high sensitivity (the rate of true positives detected was always higher than 95%), an excellent LOD (1 µg l(-1)) and high throughput (10 min per sample).