You are here:
EXTRACTION TECHNIQUES FOR THE REMOVAL OF ARSENICALS FROM SEAFOOD EXPOSURE MATRICES WITH ICP-MS DETECTION
Citation:
Creed, J T., P A. Gallagher, X. Wei, AND C A. Schwegel. EXTRACTION TECHNIQUES FOR THE REMOVAL OF ARSENICALS FROM SEAFOOD EXPOSURE MATRICES WITH ICP-MS DETECTION. Presented at 4th International Symposium on Speciation of Elements in Biological, Environmental and Toxicological Sciences, Vancouver, Canada, June 25-July 1, 2000.
Impact/Purpose:
To develop an arsenic speciation protocol for the analysis of dietary seafoods to be used to support fish advisories, improve relative source (water versus diet) contribution for arsenic and provide improved dietary exposure estimates in future epidemiology (EPI) studies.
Description:
Most of the existing arsenic dietary databases were developed from the analysis of total arsenic in water and dietary samples. These databases have been used to estimate arsenic exposure and in turn human health risk. However, these dietary databases are becoming obsolete as the distribution of toxic and non-toxic arsenicals in various food groups becomes better understood through research in arsenic speciation. Seafoods have been a target food group because of the relatively high total arsenic concentration associated with seafoods indicate that the arsenicals present are non-toxic. This generality can be misleading in certain seafoods because the extraction efficiency of the arsenicals can be relatively low and/or the toxic species have been found to be a large percentage of the total arsenic extracted. In order to move from this generality toward a preliminary database established from speciation data, analytical methods with near quantitative extraction along with good species specific preservation are essential. Methods which document their performance via fortified matrices are required to begin to generate a preliminary database of known quality. Research to date has indicated that the analyses of seafood samples is strongly marix dependent. This results in speciation data in which the speciated fraction represents less than half of the available arsenic. Therefore, the arsenic risk information associated with this data would require a qualifier which indicates that over 50% of the arsenic is of unknown toxicity. In an attempt to move toward a more quantitative extraction, alternative weak or soft digestion and enzymatic approaches have been investigated. These results will be reported with a special emphasis on species specific integrity.