A method of electrothermal vaporization inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ETV-ICP-MS) for the determination of trace lanthanides and yttrium in soil samples with a polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE) emulsion as chemical modifier to promote the vaporization of the analytes from the graphite furnace was developed in this paper. The analytical characteristics, spectral interference and matrix effect of the analytical method were evaluated and critically compared with those of pneumatic nebulization inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (PN-ICP-MS). Under the optimized operation conditions, the relative detection limits of lanthanides (La-Lu) and yttrium for ETV-ICP-MS and PN-ICP-MS were 0.4-20ngl−1 and 1.0-21ngl−1, respectively, the absolute detection limits for ETV-ICP-MS were 4-200 fg, which were improved by 1-2 orders of magnitude compared with PN-ICP-MS. While the analytical precision of ETV-ICP-MS is worse than that of PN-ICP-MS, with the R. S. D. S (%) of 4.1-10% for the former and 2.9-7.8% for the latter. Regarding to the matrix effect, both conventional method and stepwise dilution method were employed to observe the effect of matrix and the very similar results were obtained. It was found that the highest tolerance concentration of the matrix is 1000mgl−1 and 800mgl−1 for ETV-ICP-MS and PN-ICP-MS, respectively. To assess the accuracy, the proposed method was applied to the determination of trace lanthanides and yttrium in three different soil standard reference materials and one soil sample, and the determined values are in good agreement with the certified values or reference values.