A novel method for the determination of nickel and palladium in environmental samples by low temperature ETV-ICP-OES with dimethylglyoxime(DMG)as both the extractant and chemical modifier has been developed.In this study,it was found that nickel and palladium can form complexes with dimethylglyoxime(0.05%,mass fraction)at pH 6.0 and can be extracted into chloroform quantitatively.The complexes can be evaporated into plasma at a suita-ble temperature(1400 ℃)for ICP-OES detection.Under the optimized conditions,the detection limits of nickel and palladium are 0.48 and 0.40 ng/mL,respectively,while the RSD values are separately 5.0% and 3.1%(ρ=50 ng/mL,n=7).The proposed method was applied to the determination of the target analytes in environmental samples with satisfactory results.