Speciation Of Organomercury Compounds Research Articles

Speciation of organomercury compounds by capillary electrophoresis with pre-column derivatization and on-line stacking

Simultaneous separation and detection of three organomercury species, namely methylmercury (MeHg), ethylmercury (EtHg), and phenylmercury (PhHg), was performed by using capillary electrophoresis (CE) with UV detection. Pre-column derivatization with thiosalicylic acid and on-line salt-induced stacking significantly improved the detection performance. Buffer pH, ion strength, and additive were optimized for CE separation, concentration of NaCl in sample solution and injection time were optimized for on-line stacking. The limits of detection were 76.9, 83.0 and 76.4 μg/L for PhHg, EtHg and MeHg, respectively. The developed method was validated by certified reference material and liquid chromatography-atomic fluorescence spectroscopy, which suggests this method could be useful in the speciation of organomercury compounds in biological samples.

Chemical availability of mercury in stream sediments from the Almadén area, Spain.

The chemical speciation, fractionation and availability of mercury in sediments from a cinnabar mining area (Almadén, Spain) was studied with different extraction and analytical procedures, in order to determine the degree to which the ecosystem is harmed by this pollutant. Three total extraction procedures, a sequential extraction and the speciation of organo-mercury compounds were performed in nine sediment samples. In the study area, although concentrations of mercury can be extremely high (up to 1,000 mg kg(-1)), no organomercury compounds were detected (< 2 microg kg(-1) and the availability of this element seems restricted. One of the methods for total extraction presented considerably lower recovery in Almadén's sediments, yet the results were controlled with certified reference materials. This disagreement was attributed to the fact that the mercury is in a refractory form. Sequential extraction was able to show that most of the mercury is associated with sulfides (probably as metacinnabar) or in the residual refractory phase (probably as red cinnabar).