determination of total sulfur dioxide in chinese herbal medicines via triple quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry as an important treatment method sulfur fumigation plays an essential role in the production and preservation of traditional chinese herbal medicines although there is strict regulation on the use of sulfur dioxide the abuse of sulfur dioxide still occurred from time to time and the public faces a high risk of exposure because of the poor precision and tedious preparation procedures of traditional recommended titration the accurate and convenient determination of sulfur dioxide in chinese herbal medicines is still a critical analytical task for medicines safety and the public health in this study an accurate highthroughput and convenient method for the absolute determination of so2 in chinese herbal medicines based on triple quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry icpmsms technique is developed the study compared the quantitative ability for sulfur when the icpms operated under traditional single quadrupole qms mode and novel triple quadrupole msms mode with three reactioncollision cell condition no gas helium and oxygen the result indicated that when the concentration of sulfate ranging from 05 to 100 mg l isotopic 4s can be selected as quantitative ion either the icpms operated under the qms mode or msms mode the use of helium in the reactioncollision cell decreased the single intensity of background ions better than qms mode the msms mode can effectively reduced background interference but there are no significant differences about the linear range and limit of detection however when the icpms operated under msms mode and oxygen was used as reaction gas in the reactioncollision cell the icpmsms provided an interferencefree performance the linear range and limit of detection improved significantly either s or 4s exhibits an excellent linearity r 0999 over the concentration range of 002100 mg l with a limit of detection of 548 and 976 g l for s6o4 and 4s6o4 respectively the chinese herbal medicines was treated using microwave digestion added 6 ml nitric acid and 2 ml hydrogen peroxide before analysis the amount of nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide were optimized the method was validated using chinese herbal standard reference material gbw10020 the sample was treated and detected in six parallel and the average concentrations obtained using the developed method 042 001 is in excellent agreement with the standard concentration 041 003 the study demonstrates an accurate and convenient approach for the quantification of so2 in chinese herbal medicines