Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala has installed a modern spectroscopy instrument to identify the presence of heavy metals in the raw materials and medicines.
Arya Vaidya Sala Managing Trustee and Chief Physician P. Madhavankutty Varier inaugurated the instrument named Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrophotometer (ICP-OES) at Arya Vaidya Sala’s quality control laboratory at Kottakkal on Friday.
No other Ayurvedic institution in the country is known to be using ICP-OES, which works on the principle that atoms and ions can absorb energy to move electrons from the ground state to an excited state. In ICP-OES, the source of the energy is heat from an argon plasma that operates at 10,000 kelvin. The ICP-OES principle relies on those excited atoms releasing light at specific wavelengths as they transition to a lower energy level.
It is widely suspected that some Ayurvedic medicines contain heavy metals like lead and mercury. The ICP-OES instrument will help not only to identify the presence of such elements, but also measure their quantity and take remedial measures.
Until now, Arya Vaidya Sala used atomic absorption spectroscopy for identifying heavy metals.
Arya Vaidya Sala public relations officer M.T. Ramakrishnan said that the new technology would help the institution not only to enhance the quality of its medicines to a higher level, but also to keep abreast of the changing world.
