Determination of total mercury in biological tissues by flow injection cold vapour generation atomic absorption spectrometry following tetramethylammonium hydroxide digestion.
A simple, rapid and reliable method was developed for the determination of total mercury in biological samples. Samples were solubilized using tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH). The organically bound mercury was cleaved and converted to inorganic mercury by on-line addition of KMnO4. The decomposed mercury together with inorganic mercury originally present in samples was determined by flow injection cold vapour atomic absorption spectrometry after reduction to elemental mercury vapour using NaBH4. A sample throughput of 100 measurements per hour was achieved after a 30 min dissolution with TMAH. The relative standard deviation for 20 micrograms l-1 Hg was 1.3% (n = 11) and the limit of detection was 0.1 microgram l-1 (3 sigma). The proposed method was validated by the analysis of a suite of certified marine biological reference materials, DORM-2 (dogfish muscle), DOLT-2 (dogfish liver) and TORT-2 (lobster hepatopancreas), with calibration against simple HgII standards.
Institute for National Measurement Standards, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
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Tao
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Willie
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Sturgeon
D017022:Flow Injection Analysis; D006801:Humans; D008628:Mercury / Q000032:analysis*; D000644:Quaternary Ammonium Compounds; D013054:Spectrophotometry, Atomic
D000644:Quaternary Ammonium Compounds; D008628:Mercury; C027917:tetramethylammonium