Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala installs a modern spectroscopy instrument to identify heavy metals in raw materials, medicines

Kotakkal Arya Vaidya Sala has set up a state-of-the-art spectroscopic device to detect heavy metals in medications and raw materials.

On Friday, P. Madhavankutty Varier, Chief Physician and Managing Trustee of Arya Vaidya Sala, officially opened the Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrophotometer (ICP-OES) at the quality control laboratory located in Kottakkal.

ICP-OES, which operates on the premise that atoms and ions may absorb energy to shift electrons from the ground state to an excited state, is not known to be used by any other Ayurvedic school in the nation. ICP-OES uses heat from an argon plasma operating at 10,000 Kelvin as its energy source.

The excited atoms' release of light at certain wavelengths upon transitioning to a lower energy level is the basis for the ICP-OES concept.

There is a common suspicion that many Ayurvedic medications include heavy metals like mercury and lead. In addition to determining if such components are present, the ICP-OES equipment may also be used to quantify them and take corrective action.

Up to now, Arya Vaidya Sala identified heavy metals using atomic absorption spectroscopy.

According to M.T. Ramakrishnan, public relations officer at Arya Vaidya Sala, the new technology will assist the organisation in keeping up with global changes while simultaneously improving the quality of its medications.