ABSTRACT
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To develop a method for determining the content of mercury contained in Yuhong ointment.</p><p><b>METHOD</b>The wet catalytic digestion method was adopted for the pretreatment, and the mercury content in Yuhong ointment was determined by hydride generation-atomic absorption spectrometry (HG-AAS).</p><p><b>RESULT</b>The mercury showed a good linear relation in the range from 2 to 20 microg x L(-1), with the average recovery of 104.27% and RSD of 3.37%. The RSD for real sample repeated measurement was determined to be 8.4%. The mercury content in Yuhong ointment was detected in range from 0.7 to 1.5 mg x g(-1).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The proposed method is accurate, highly reproducible and it can be used to control mercury content of Yuhong ointment.</p>