Arsenic containing medium and long chain fatty acids in marine fish oil identified as degradation products using reversed-phase HPLC-ICP-MS/ESI-MS

This study describes the identification and quantification of five new arsenolipids present in raw marine fish oil extracted mainly from Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens). The arsenolipids accumulated on bentonite, which has been used to clean-up raw fish oils in an industrial process for producing commercial fish oil rich in omega-3 fatty acids. The bentonite, which adsorbed the arsenolipids efficiently from the raw fish oil was extracted with different solvents and subsequently cleaned up by normal phase chromatography, which fractionated all absorbed compounds according to polarity. The arsenic containing fatty acids (AsFA) and arsenic containing hydrocarbons (AsHC) were determined using a separation by reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography coupled online to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (RP-HPLC-ICP-MS) for quantification and simultaneously to electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) for identification. A mixture of methanol/chloroform (1 : 2 v/v) was sufficient for the extraction of the majority of the adsorbed arsenic species (129 mu g g(-1) As bentonite). The pre-concentration using the adsorbent with subsequent fractionation made it possible to identify minor arsenolipids especially in the polar methanol fraction. Besides two major arsenic containing hydrocarbons (AsHC332 and AsHC360) three new arsenic containing medium chain fatty acids (As-MCFA) of molecular mass 250, 278, 292 and two new arsenic containing long chain fatty acids (As-LCFA) of mass 306 and 320 could be identified although their concentrations were as low as 0.004 mu g g(-1) As bentonite. The significance of MCFA is that these compounds usually occur not as free fatty acids but are conjugated to glycerol forming triglycerides. Confirmation of this hypothesis is given in the fact that a methanol extract which was directly analyzed without any clean up procedure did only contain traces of As-LCFA and no As-MCFA but the same concentration of the more inert AsHCs, which are not expected to be conjugated to other organic compounds. This highlights that a successful pre-concentration and clean up procedure is essential to determine traces of minor arsenolipids but it does not provide a guarantee for the integrity of all arsenolipid species.