Capillary electrophoresis with inductively coupled plasma‐mass spectrometric and electrospray time of flight mass spectrometric detection for the determination of arsenic species in fish samples

Abstract

CE was coupled to inductively coupled plasma MS (ICP-MS) and ESI-MS to identify and quantify the arsenic species arsenobetaine (AsB), arsenite (As(III)), arsenate (As(V)), and dimethylarsinic acid (DMA). A GC-flame ionization detector (FID)-based German standard method and ICP-MS were used for validation of the data obtained for arsenobetaine and total arsenic, respectively. LODs obtained with the CE-ESI-TOF-MS method were 1.0x10(-7) M for AsB, 5.0x10(-7) M for DMA, and 1.0x10(-6) M for As(III) and As(V). For the CE-ICP-MS method, LODs were 8.5x10(-8) M for AsB, 9.5x10(-8) M for DMA, 9.3x10(-8) M for As(III), and 6.2x10(-8) M for As(V). While CE-ICP-MS provided high sensitivity and better reproducibility for quantitative measurements, CE-ESI-MS with a TOF mass analyzer proved to be valuable for species identification. With this setup, fish samples were prepared and analyzed and the obtained data were successfully validated with the independent methods.