An improved sensitive automated method for the determination of mercury in geological materials by cold vapor atomic absorption has been developed. Sample is digested with nitric and hydrochloric acids at low heat. Mercuric ions in the digested sample solution are reduced to elemental mercury by stannous chloride. The gaseous mercury separated from the solution is swept by a stream of argon into the absorption cell of an LDC/Milton Roy Mercury Monitor where the atomic absorption at 253.7 nm is measured. The precision of the method is 2.7% r.s.d., and the detection limit is 1 ppb. The results on 53 international geochemical reference samples are presented.