Determination of mercury and arsenic in white beet sugar by vapor generation atomic absorption spectrometry

Arsenic and mercury were analyzed in white beet sugar at the mug/ kg level by vapor generation coupled with atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). Arsenic was determined by hydride generation (HG-AAS) and mercury by cold vapor (CV-AAS). The proposed methods attempted to solve the lack of sensitivity found in most white sugar arsenic and mercury analyses when graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GF-AAS) or colorimetric methods (GS2/3-25 ICUMSA method) are used. In this work, it was also demonstrated that sample digestion can be avoided without any significant influence (p<0.05) on the final results. As a consequence, analysis time and risk of sample contamination are noticeably decreased. The method was validated by analysis of commercial white beet sugar samples and samples spiked with 10 mug of arsenic or mercury per kg of dry sucrose. Under repeatability conditions, recoveries of 108% and 96% were obtained, respectively. The analysis procedure was applied to the determination of these toxic elements in commercial beet sugar samples, where levels not greater than 10 mug/kg As and 2 mug/kg Hg were found in all cases.