Ion-pairing reversed-phase chromatography coupled to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry as a tool to determine mercurial species in freshwater fish

Advances in the Determination of Xenobiotics in Foods

“…The LODs were 0.015, 0.014, 0.028 and 0.042 µg L −1 for Hg(II), MeHg, EtHg and PhHg, respectively. The analysis of fish tissues CRMs demonstrated a good recovery of Hg species (91-106%) and the accuracy of the method [71].…”

“…It has negative consequences on the operations of some detectors, such as nebulizer obstruction and interface deposition of carbon and salt in ICP-MS. Species separation by HPLC implies long separation times reducing analytical efficiency and throughput [71]. The large volumes of mobile phase waste, rich on toxic organic compounds, place this technique at a great distance of green chemistry.…”

“…The addition of phenylalanine (Phe) enhanced the analytical efficiency and reduced waste production through reducing the baseline separation time in combination with short C18 guard columns (5 µm, 12.5 mm × 2.1 mm i.d.) [71]. Sample preparation consisted of ultrasonication (15 min at 40 °C) of 0.5 g of fish with two successive additions of 10 mL of a solution containing 5 mol L −1 HCl and 2.0 mmol L -1 Cys.…”

“…After centrifugation and 0.45 µm filtration, 5 µL of the extract were injected. The analysis of five freshwater fish samples evidenced that this green and efficient method could be exploited for (food) routine analysis laboratories [71]. Hg(II), MeHg, EtHg and PhHg were baseline separated by two consecutive C18 guard columns with optimized mobile phases (2.0 mmol L -1 SDBS + 2.0 mmol L -1 Cys + 1.0 mmol L -1 Phe (pH 3.0) and 4.0 mmol L -1 TBAH + 2.0 mmol L -1 MPS + 2.0 mmol L -1 Phe (pH 6.0)).…”

A broad-applicability method for mercury speciation in various seafoods using microwave-assisted extraction and ion chromatography-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

“…To date, several microwave-assisted and ultrasonic-assisted extraction methods have been developed for the extraction of mercury species in fish samples. 6–12 However, most previous extraction methods used higher concentrations of HCl solution (1.0 or 5.0 mol L −1 ) as the extracting solvent, which may lead to the alteration of mercury species and is not applicable to the following speciation analysis of mercury. 6–10 In particular, most extraction methods previously reported were used to extract mercury species in only fish samples, and were rarely used for other seafood samples such as seaweeds and shellfishes.…”