A trace element taken in a living body acts as an essential or toxic substance for the life preservation according to the amount of their physiological demand. It is also expected that the activity of trace elements in a living body suffers from coexisting substances, resulting in the so-called reciprocal and/or competitive effect.
From these reasons, the development and the practice of simultaneous multielement analysis are required intensely in many fields of environmental science such as analytical chemistry, biology, agriculture, nutrition, medicine etc.
In this paper, the following methods used in recent papers are reviewed as simultaneous multielement analysis : neutron activation analysis (instrumental- and radiochemical-; INAA and RNAA), particle induced X-ray emission spectrometry (PIXE), X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XFS), inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) and simultaneous multielement atomic absorption spectrometry with continuum source (SIMAAC).
