Determination of Methylmercury and Ethylmercury in Biological Samples by Alkaline Digestion-High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Inductively Coupled Plamas Mass Spectrometry

A method for the determination of methylmercury and ethylmercury in biological samples by HPLC-ICP-MS with alkaline digestion was established. Micro-flow nebulizer was used to improve intensity. In optimized conditions, the detection limits for methylmercury and ethylmercury were 0.036 μg/L and 0.03 μg/L respectively. The linear range was up to 4 order of magnitude from 0.03x μg/L to 3x μg/L and the relative standard deviation was 1.79％ and 1.44％. The method was validated by analyzing the BCR 464 (tunny) and spiked experiment. The recovery was 85.9% for methylmercury and 84.5% for ethylmercury.