Abstract: In this study, a method for the determination of cadmium (Cd) in edible oil samples was established using extraction induced by emulsion breaking combined with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The key parameters affecting the extraction efficiency including surfactant type, surfactant concentration, nitric acid concentration, and sample mass were carefully examined and optimized, and the optimized conditions were applied to determinate edible oil samples. The use of Triton X-114 at a concentration of 0.09 g/mL, a nitric acid concentration of 5% (V/V) and 2.0 g of samples were found to be the optimal conditions. The limit of detection (LOD) was 0.031 ng/g for Cd with a correlation coefficient over 0.999 9, and the recoveries were in the range of 90.3%?105.0%. There were no statistical differences between the results obtained by extraction induced by emulsion breaking and by the traditional microwave digestion method. The extraction induced by emulsion breaking procedure is a simple, fast and green sample pretreatment method, which could be utilized for the rapid and accurate determination of cadmium in edible oils by ICP-MS.

Key words: edible oil, cadmium, extraction induced by emulsion breaking, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry