PH04 Advances in Analysis and Measurements
Exhibit Hall
8:00 AM - Thursday
(PH016) Extraction and determination of arsenic species in fish tissue.
Gurleyuk, H1, Garcia, J1, 1 Frontier Geosciences, Seattle, WA, USA
ABSTRACT- The toxicity of arsenic to aquatic organisms, and thus indirectly to humans through consumption, has been shown to differ greatly depending on the species of arsenic present. Toxicological studies show inorganic arsenic species to be more toxic than organic arsenic species. To determine total inorganic arsenic in fish tissue, we have been using cell disruption with 2M HCl followed by hydride generation cryogenic trapping atomic absorption spectrometry. Unfortunately, this method does not provide information on all arsenic species present. In addition, higher detection limits (1 ng/g) are encountered only due to high background levels incurred from the extraction process. This work was aimed at developing a robust method that can provide information about all arsenic species present in tissues while providing low detection limits. Therefore, we used combinations of a variety of extraction solutions (water, hydrochloric acid, methanol, tetramethylammonium hydroxide) with different extraction techniques (sonication, microwaves and cryo-grinding) to find conditions that maintains the nature of arsenic species present in the sample. The extracts were analyzed by ion chromatography - inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (IC-ICP-MS). The use of IC-ICP-MS allowed us to achieve separation of the arsenic species (As(III), As(V), DMAs, MMAs, and arsenosugars) while providing detection limits better than 0.1 ng/g. Data will be presented from the method validation study demonstrating the effectiveness of this technique on real world samples. Advantages and disadvantages of the method will be discussed.
Key words: arsenic, extraction, speciation, tissue