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# Why can't carbon and nitrogen be detected in ICP-MS and ICP-OES techniques?
Tags: spectroscopy, mass-spectrometry
- Score: 7
- Views: 10904
- Answers: 3
- Answered: yes
- Asked by: user40994 (83 rep)
- Asked: 2015-12-03
- Edited: 2015-12-03
- Site: chemistry
## Question
Why can't carbon and nitrogen be detected in ICP-MS and ICP-OES techniques?
My book says this technique is efficient for detecting multiple elements, with exception of halogens and carbon. I found somewhere that ICP is an open system, therefore it doesn't allow carbon detection. But why is that exactly?
## Answers
### Answer by Yoda (score: 5 [ACCEPTED])
As you say, air is allowed to enter the plasma. Air consists primarily of $\ce{N2}$ and $\ce{O2}$, and would clearly interfere with any oxygen or nitrogen in the sample. The problem is not that ICP-MS or -OES cannot detect them, the problem is air.
### Answer by Oscar Lanzi (score: 1)
As an aside, the lack of carbon and nitrogen detection by ICP-OES does not propose practical problems because there are other methods to detect them. Combustion analysis is one such alternative.
### Answer by Luke Burrow (score: 0)
Like the previous answers said, nitroge