Troubleshooting Mining Samples Common Causes of Bad Data

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This week on Bench Boost Mike, Autumn, Micah, and Josh discuss common ICP-OES/ICP-MS issues in mining analyses and how to troubleshoot them by separating sample-prep from instrument root causes. Key sample-prep problems include incomplete digestion of refractory minerals, loss of volatile analytes, spitting, and adsorption/instability during transfers. They review contamination before jumping into issues borne from instrument assays; covering the topics of matrix effects from high TDS & mitigation via dilution, internal standards, matrix matching, and more. They also note how physical effects will impact nebulization or transport efficiency. QC pitfalls with non-matrix-matched standards, internal-standard limitations, and the importance of representative CRMs are discussed before the team provides a structured troubleshooting checklist including blanks, duplicate agreement, spike recovery, dilution linearity, and multi-wavelength/isotope agreement.