A novel method has been developed for the determination of trace La, Eu and Y in high purity ZrO2by electrothermal vaporization inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ETV-ICP-AES) with 1-phenyl-3-methyl-4-benzoyl-5-pyrazone (PMBP) as extractant and chemical modifier. The matrix was quantitatively separated from the selected elements in 6M HNO3medium by extraction with 0.1M PMBP in chloroform. The vaporization behaviors, effect factors and analytical characteristics of above selected elements were investigated in detail. Under the optimized conditions, the detection limits were 8.0, 0.9 and 1.0ng ml−1for La, Eu and Y with the relative standard deviations of 3.3, 3.4 and 4.0% (n=7, c=0.5 μg ml−1), respectively. The proposed method has been applied to determine trace impurities in ZrO2.