INTRODUCTION The acute toxicity of inorganic tin is manifested as gastric irritation, nausea, vomiting and abdominal discomfort. Inorganic tin salts are poorly absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract and rapidly excreted Nevertheless, there are several case reports of gastric irritation and vomiting in humans consuming canned foods or beverages, particularly sour fruit products packaged in tinplate cans and containing high levels of tin. Food and especially canned food represent the main source of human exposure to tin. Maximum level of tin in canned foods is 200 mg/kg for canned foods other than beverages and 100 mg/kg for canned beverages, including fruit and vegetable juices(Commission Regulation EC No 1881/2006). Techniques that are most commonly used for deter- mining tin are UV/VIS(HUANG et al. 1997), X-Ray fluorescence spectrophotometry spectrometry(MINO 2006), inductively coupled plasma atomic emission(PERRING& BASIC-DoRzAK 2002) spectrometry and electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry