2. ENVIRONMENTAL ChEMISTRy & TEChNOLOGy 2.1. Lectures

Chem. Listy, 102, s265–s1311 (2008) Environmental Chemistry & Technology
then Se (VI) go out from reversed phase column to the ICP-
MS. At 8.3 minutes we switch on the chiral column again
going out D-Selenomethionine and L-Selenomethionine.
At this moment, MeHg and inorganic mercury are still
inside the reversed phase column and to get their separation,
at 13.3 minutes we disconnect the chiral column again and
the mobile phase B is pumped. With this change we get the
elution of MeHg and inorganic mercury.
Results
Fig. 1. illustrates the chromatograms obtained with the
method proposed and the Table II show the species detected,
their retention times, detection limits and linear range. The
detection limits vary between 0.3 and 9.7 ng depending
of the species. The Relative Standard Deviation (% RSD) for
the retention time is below 1 % for all species and for peak
area is below 19 % for all species.
Fig. 1. Chromatogram obtained by the proposed method for
77 Se, 82 Se and 202 hg isotopes
Conclusions
This work reports for the first time an analytical methodology
for the chromatographic separation of mercury and
selenium species including chiral ones.
The methodology proposed for the simultaneous speciation
allows a deeper insight into the interaction between Se
and Hg-species which is a key question due to the beneficious
effect of Se-species into Hg toxicity.
s436
Table II
Retention times, detection limits and linear range of the
species
Retention Detection Linear
Peak Species time limit range
[s] [ng] [ppb]
1 Se-cystamine 162.2 6.24 62.4–1,000
2 Se-cystine 189.2 4.03 40.2–500
3
Se-methylselenocysteine
243.3 7.78 77.8–1,000
4 Se (IV) 279.3 7.26 72.6–1,000
5 Se (VI) 420.8 6.63 66.3–1,000
6 Se-L-methionine 717.3 9.67 96.7–1,000
7 Se-D-methionine 752.4 4.78 47.8–1,000
8 Peak due to mobile phase change
9 Methylmercury 1,265.1 4.40 44.0–10,000
10 Inorganic mercury 1,344.4 0.30 3–10,000
The developed methodology allows high sample throughput
and low sample consumption that is highly important
for the application to food and biological samples.
This method don’t has memory effect in the system.
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