The Hildebrand grid nebulizer (HGN) was used for the inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometric determination of major, minor and trace elements in perchloric acid digests of rodent femurs, sulphuric acid digests of rodent soft tissues and in solutions leached from foodware using acetic acid. The HGN performed well when the signal-to-background ratio was optimized for each acid solution by adjusting the injector gas flow, solution uptake rate and observation height. Three problems were overcome while using the HGN: (i) nebulizer wash-out time was reduced by rinsing at high uptake rate with the solution to be analysed; (ii) clogging of the injector tip of the torch during femur analysis was minimized by extensive rinsing; and (iii) errors due to the suppression of the Cu, Fe, Mn and Zn signal intensities by matrix elements Ca and P in femur digests were eliminated by calibrating the spectrometer with matched matrix standard solutions. Overall, the precision of analysis for the leach and tissue solutions analysed in this study ranged from 0.5 to 2.9% relative standard deviation.