Fluorometric Determination of Selenium in Foods

Abstract

Abstract A fluorometric method using 2,3-diaminonaphthalene for estimating selenium has been evaluated with regard to its applicability to food samples. Charring of the sample during digestion appeared to result in losses of native and added selenium from some samples, so a modified wet digestion procedure was introduced. Digestion first in nitric acid followed by a mixture of nitric-perchloric-sulfuric acids substantially reduced the incidence of sample charring for a variety of foods. The mean apparent recovery of selenium added as selenite or selenate at 100 and 500 ng levels to 0.1 and 1.0 g corn cereal, skim milk powder, and meat and 0.1 g fish was 101.0%; the actual recovery of the same levels of selenium from standard solutions was 96.6%. For a variety of samples containing 5—750 ng native or added selenium, the standard deviation as 4.7 + 1.95 X 10-2W ng, where W = ng selenium in the sample taken for analysis. The relative standard deviation (RSD) as a function of selenium weight (ng) was 50% (10), 6.7% (100), 4.3% (200), 3.1% (400), 2.7% (600), and 2.5% (800). The detection limit (weight of selenium at which RSD = 50%) was 10 ng at a mean blank level of 25 ng.