The importance of the minor and trace elements in mineral chemistry is becoming more widely recognized with advances in technology and inter pretation. The characteristics of many materials can be influenced by the trace-element impurities found in various systems. For example, the quality of steel is altered by its trace oxygen content1; the presence of trace vanadium in crude-oil poisons the platinum catalysts used in the cracking process by the oil industry2; sodium and chloride concentrations in sweat are used for the detection of cystic fibrosis in children today3; and the concentration of trace pesticides in foodstuffs have importance.4 Numerous other practical applications of trace-element determinations have been investigated and reported on in the literature5 in virtually all of the sciences.