Concentration of harmful elements (As, Cd, Hg, Pb) and some beneficial elements (Ca, Fe, Se, Zn) in some cough syrups in the Vietnamese pharmaceutical market were determined by inductively coupled plasma - mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) after sample digestion in microwave oven. The results of analysis showed that most of toxic elements are in the limited range of concentration according to the curent regulations for the limit of heavy metals in supplement food (QCVN 8- 2:2011/ BYT
46/2007/QĐ-BYT) or toxic metals in herbal medicines and products (WHO). Concentration of harmful elements ranges from undetected to 1.097 ppm. Beneficial elements were present in all samples. In particular, concentration of zinc is the highest of all samples, which can be 14 to 238 times higher than other elements. In the sample of supplement food, there were lower concentrations of beneficical elements than in drug samples, in which the concentration of zinc and calcium was lowest and the concentration of the harmful element cadmium was the highest. The method has low detection limits with ppt level, the relative standard deviations (% RSD) are less than 15%, and the recovery of elements are in the range from 79.8 % to 101.2 %, which meets AOAC requirements for trace.