Single-particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry in multi-scenario detection for global health.

Conventional bulk analysis merely captures averaged elemental signals and ignores particle and cellular heterogeneity. This inherent limitation introduces biases in nanoscale pollutant risk assessment and compromises the accuracy of high-precision biomedical detection. Single-particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS) addresses these drawbacks by enabling microscopic single-entity characterization, which provides multidimensional particle data for trace analysis of complex matrices. This review summarizes recent SP-ICP-MS methodological optimizations and its representative applications in environmental monitoring, food safety, and biomedicine, alongside current technical limitations including poor ultrafine particle detection, insufficient reference materials, and inadequate clinical validation. Future directions covering algorithm improvement, standardization and application expansion are proposed. It highlights the unique merits of SP-ICP-MS and provides valuable insights for developing high-precision global health detection systems.