Determination of inorganic and total mercury in marine biological samples by cold vapor generation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry after tetramethylammonium hydroxide digestion

Abstract

A simple, highly-sensitive and accurate method is presented for the determination of both inorganic mercury and total mercury in marine biological samples. 0.1 g of sample was completely solubilized in 1 g of tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) at room temperature. The TMAH-digested samples were spiked with 199 Hg enriched isotope and diluted to about 14 mL with deionized water. The spiked sample solutions were then analyzed for inorganic mercury determinations by isotope dilution inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry with cold vapor generation. The solutions were further 5 times diluted with deionized water for total mercury determinations. SnCl 2 reducing agent was used for the inorganic mercury determinations, and NaBH 4 for the total mercury determinations. No reagents other than the reducing agents with acid solutions were used for the mercury determinations. The proposed method was validated by the analysis of three certified reference materials, DORM-2 (dogfish muscle), NIST SRM1566b (oyster) and KRISS tuna CRM. The detection limit of the method was found to be 0.018 ng g À1 .

Methylmercury determination in sub-ppb level by cold vapor analysis: facts, mechanisms and optimization

“…1 and 2). These vairations were attributed to the formation of CH3HgH, a methyl-mercury hydride volatilized among with Hg 0 [5].…”

“…Ηowever, as in the aqueous phase the dominant form of mercury is the methylated one, precise analytical methods should be developed respectively, being able to determine the specific pollutant species at the sub-ppb levels. Cold vapor analysis is a well known technology that can fulfill this criterium, but according to the relevant literature, there is no a commonly acceptable unified experimental procedure and therefore, further investigation is still required [4,5].…”

Determination of As, Hg and Pb in herbs using slurry sampling flow injection chemical vapor generation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

“…Hence, efforts have been made to couple alternative sample introduction systems, to ICP-MS to extend its application range. Vapor generator (VG) is one such system that is currently employed in ICP-MS (Abranko, Stefanka, & Fodor, 2003;Chang & Jiang, 2008;Hwang & Jiang, 1997;Infante, Sanchez, & Sanz-Medel, 2000;Mann, Long, & Kelly, 2003;Park & Do, 2008;Ribeiro, Vieira, & Curtius, 2004;Xie, Johnson, Spayd, Hall, & Buckley, 2007). Several studies have shown that the sensitivity and detection limit of vapor-forming elements are greatly improved when they are introduced into the plasma as vapors.…”

UV–Vis Spectrophotometric Determination of Mercury Based on Room Temperature Ionic Liquids Enhanced Hollow-Fiber Liquid-Phase Microextraction

“…In order to obtain reliable results, efficient separation and preconcentration step are usually necessary prior to the analysis. Some sensitive and selective methods for Hg speciation analysis in various environmental matrices have been developed, such as atomic absorption spectrometry, [2] chemical vapor generation and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), [3,4] chemical vapor generation coupled with inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), [5,6] and cold vapor generation atomic fluorescence spectrometry (CVG-AFS). [7][8][9][10] Hollow-fiber liquid-phase microextraction (HF-LPME) is an attractive and novel pretreatment method.…”