Determination of Mercury Species by High Performance Liquid Chromatography On-line Coupled with Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry Based on UV-induced Chemical Vapor Generation Interface

A method for the determination of inorganic mercury (iHg) and methylmercury (MeHg) was developed by HPLC-ICP-MS with a UV-induced chemical vapor generation interface. The operational conditions of system such as mobile phase of liquid chromatography, formic acid concentration of UV-induced reaction reducing agent, length of UV reaction tube and so on were optimized. Under the optimized conditions, the relative standard deviations (RSD, n=7) of the chromatography peak high for the determination of iHg and MeHg are 0.72% and 0.66%, respectively. The linear range for both the mercury species is between 0.1 and 10 mu g/L, while the detection limits are 0.011 and 0.0093 mu g/L, respectively. Certified reference material (DORM-2 dogfish muscle) was used to validate this new method. The results agreed well with certified values. Meanwhile, the proposed method has been applied for the determination of iHg and MeHg in wetland water samples, and the recoveries for iHg and MeHg are between 99% and 106%, 94% and 110%, respectively.