Arsenic speciation in beverages by direct injection-ion chromatography - hydride generation atomic fluorescence spectrometry

This paper reports the advantages of coupling strong anion exchange high-pe rformance liquid chromatography hydride generation and atomic fluorescence spectrometry for the speciation of four arsenic species in wine and mineral water. The procedure developed allows the direct speciation of arsenic in these sa mples with good sensitivity, selectivity, precision and accuracy. Detection limits determined using the optimized conditions were found to be between 0.16 and 2.9 ng ml(-1) for arsenite, dimethylarsinic acid, monomethylarsoni c acid and arsenate, while standard addition studies showed that the proced ure is free from matrix interferences. As no certified reference materials are available for these analytes or matrices, validation was carried out by studying spike recoveries and by comparison of results with an alternative technique.