How much tin or cadmium?
Does your university have an SEM with an energy (or wavelength) 
dispersive spectrometer on it (EDX or WDX)? Most likely in the 
Geology department. If so, they should also have some carbon mounting 
stubs. Place the sections flat on the stub, deparaffinize, coat with 
carbon (the SEM people should also have the carbon coater), then 
place in the SEM. The beam of the SEM also generates x-rays from the 
specimen, and the energy of these x-rays is characteristic of each 
element, so the samples can be analyzed for any element heavier than 
sodium, or boron or carbon, if the instrument has a windowless or 
thin-window detector. These methods are good to about 0.1 atomic wt % 
(i.e., about 1 part per thousand). WDX is more sensitive, EDX will 
give a map of elemental distribution.
These methods are fairly quick, and potentially quantitative.

Phil

We have recently been examining tissue and found high levels of these 
two metals via chemical analysis. I wonder if anyone has methods to 
demonstrate either tin or cadmium in tissue.  They are FFPE samples.
Any help will be gratefully received.

Evelyn Kaplan
Dept of Pathology
Sultan Qaboos University
Oman

-- 
Philip Oshel
Supervisor, BBPIC microscopy facility
Department of Animal Sciences
University of Wisconsin
1675 Observatory Drive
Madison,  WI  53706 - 1284
voice: (608) 263-4162
fax: (608) 262-5157 (dept. fax)