Use of chelating resins and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for simultaneous determination of trace and major elements in small volumes of saline water samples

For some saline environments (e.g. deeply percolating groundwater, intersti tial water in marine sediments, water sample collected after several steps of fractionation) the volume of water sample available is limited. A techni que is presented which enables simultaneous determination of major and trac e elements after preconcentration of only 60 mL sample on chelating resins. Chelex-100 and Chelamine were used for the preconcentration of trace eleme nts (Cd, Cu, Pb, Zn, Sc) and rare earth elements (La, Ce, Nd, Yb) from sali ne water before their measurement by inductively coupled plasma mass spectr ometry. Retention of the major elements (Na, Ca, Mg) by the Chelamine resin was lower than by Chelex; this enabled their direct measurement in the sol ution after passage through the resin column. For trace metal recoveries bo th resins yield the same mass balance. Only Chelex resin enabled the quanti tative recovery of rare earth elements. The major elements, trace metals an d rare earth elements cannot be measured after passage through one resin on ly. The protocol proposes the initial use of Chelamine for measurement of t race and major elements and then passage the same sample through the Chelex resin for determination of the rare earth elements. The detection limit ra nged from 1 to 12 pg mL(-1). At concentrations of 1 ng mL-1 of trace metals and REE spiked in coastal water the precision for 10 replicates was in the range of 0.3-3.4% (RSD). The accuracy of the method was demonstrated by an alyzing two standard reference waters, SLRS-3 and CASS-3.