One of the largest volume uses for ICP-MS is in the medical and forensic field, specifically, toxicology.  A physician may order a metal assay for a number of reasons, such as suspicion of heavy metal poisoning, metabolic concerns, and even hepatological issues. Depending on the specific parameters unique to each patient's diagnostic plan, samples collected for analysis can range from whole blood, urine, plasma, serum, to even packed red blood cells. Another primary use for this instrument lies in the environmental field. Such applications include water testing for municipalities or private individuals all the way to soil, water and other material analysis for industrial purposes.
In recent years, industrial and biological monitoring has presented another major need for metal analysis via ICP-MS. Individuals working in factories where exposure to metals is likely and unavoidable, such as a battery factory, are required by their employer to have their blood or urine analyzed for metal toxicity on a regular basis. This monitoring has become a mandatory practice implemented by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, in an effort to protect workers from their work environment and ensure proper rotation of work duties (i.e. rotating employees from a high exposure position to a low exposure position).
ICP-MS is also used widely in the geochemistry field for radiometric dating, in which it is used to analyze relative abundance of different isotopes, in particular uranium and lead. ICP-MS is more suitable for this application than the previously used thermal ionization mass spectrometry, as species with high ionization energy such as osmium and tungsten can be easily ionized. For high precision ratio work, multiple collector instruments are normally used to reduce the effect noise on the calculated ratios.
In the field of flow cytometry, a new technique uses ICP-MS to replace the traditional fluorochromes. Briefly, instead of labelling antibodies (or other biological probes) with fluorochromes, each antibody is labelled with a distinct combinations of lanthanides. When the sample of interest is analysed by ICP-MS in a specialised flow cytometer, each antibody can be identified and quantitated by virtue of a distinct ICP "footprint". In theory, hundreds of different biological probes can thus be analysed in an individual cell, at a rate of ca. 1,000 cells per second. Because elements are easily distinguished in ICP-MS, the problem of compensation in multiplex flow cytometry is effectively eliminated.
Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is a powerful technique for the elemental analysis of a wide variety of materials encountered in forensic casework. (LA-ICP-MS) has already successfully been applied to applications in forensics, metals, glasses, soils, car paints, bones and teeth, printing inks, trace elemental, fingerprint, and paper. Among these, forensic glass analysis stands out as an application for which this technique has great utility to provide highly.
Car hit and runs, burglaries, assaults, drive-by shootings and bombings such as these situations may cause glass fragments that could be used as evidence of association in glass transfer conditions. LA-ICP-MS is considered one of the best techniques for analysis of glass due to the short time for sample preparation and sample, small sample size of less than 250 nanograms. In addition there is no need for complex procedure and handling of dangerous materials that is used for digestion of the samples. This allows detecting major, minor and tracing elements with high level of precision and accuracy. There are set of properties that are used to measure glass sample such as physical and optical properties including color, thickness, density, refractive index (RI) and also, if necessary, elemental analysis can be conducted in order to enhance the value of an association.