Single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS) refers to the use of ICP-MS as a particle counting technique. When ICP-MS measurements are performed at very high data acquisition frequencies,...

No abstract

The analysis of engineered nanoparticles in environmental samples involves their detection followed by their quantification and characterization. Single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS) is an atomic spectrometry technique that allows analytical information to be obtained about nanoparticles containing specific elements and their dissolved forms (element mass per particle, size, and number and mass concentrations). As a result of its outstanding performance, SP-ICP-MS has become a relevant technique for the analysis of environmental samples containing inorganic nanoparticles, but also in the context of ecotoxicological assays and laboratory studies for simulating the release and fate of nanomaterials under environmental conditions.

Extractions methods based on ultrapure water, tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH), and tetrasodium pyrophosphate (TSPP) were applied to faeces collected from two in vivo experiments of pigs and chickens fed with a silver-based nanomaterial to study the fate and speciation of silver. For TMAH extraction, cysteine and CaCl2 were used to evaluate their stabilization effect on the silver forms. The analytical techniques single-particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS), hydrodynamic chromatography hyphenated to ICP-MS (HDC-ICP-MS) and asymmetric flow field flow fractionation coupled to ICP-MS (AF4-ICP-MS) were applied to the simultaneous detection of particulate and dissolved silver. Results have shown that water extraction was a suitable option to assess the environmental release of silver, with percentages of 3 and 9% for faeces of pigs and chickens, respectively. The use of TMAH extraction combined with SP-ICP-MS analysis was useful to characterize Ag-containing particles (less than 1%). Both stabilizers, cysteine and CaCl2, have a similar effect on silver nanoparticle preservation for chicken faeces, whereas cysteine-Triton was better for pig samples. In any case, silver extraction efficiency with TMAH was low (39–42%) for both types of faeces due to a matrix effect. TSPP followed by ICP-MS enabled the fractionation of the silver in the faeces, with silver sulphide (41%) and ionic silver (62%) being the most abundant fractions. Graphical Abstract