A derivative pulse polarographic method is described for determining traces of copper, lead and cadmium in cobalt and its compounds without separation. In hydrochloric acid medium the detection limits are respectively about 0.02, 0.04 and 0.1 ppm in metallic cobalt when analysing 2 M cobalt solutions. The procedure was applied to the analyses of synthetic and commercially available cobalt samples and showed a satisfactory sensitivity and precision at various concentrations levels of the three impurities.