DETERMINATION OF MERCURY BY INDUCTIVELY-COUPLED PLASMA MASS-SPECTROMETRY

To control the amount of mercury, polluting our environment, mercury h as to be monitored in ail areas of modern life. This requires fast and easy-to-use methods that permit the determination of mercury at level s of micrograms per liter. Up to now mercury ultratrace determination has required preconcentration or amalgamation in order to improve dete ction limits. This de creases accuracy of determination introducing a longer manipulation of the sample. Inductively coupled plasma-mass spe ctrometry (ICP-MS) allows a direct determination of ultratrace mercury , due to the choice of interference free isotopes by the mass spectrom eter detector. In fast, the detection limit for mercury by ICP-MS is 0 .001 ppb. In the present work results of Hg determinations in differen t matrices by ICP-MS are reported. ICP-MS technique results are better than those of FIMS-100. This technique is applicable to different sol id (minerals and atmospheric particulate) and liquid matrices with eli mination of interferences. For solid matrices methods of attack and di ssolution are reported. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.