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| A novel and extremely highly sensitive method for the speciation of organomercury in seafood and environmental water samples was developed by liquid-liquid-liquid microextraction combined with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The simultaneous preconcentration of methylmercury (MeHg), ethylmercury (EtHg), and phenylmercury (PhHg) and their subsequent off-line HPLC separation has been described in this work. The factors affecting on the liquid-liquid-liquid microexraction of organomercury species, including organic solvent, the pH of donor phase, concentration of chelating reagent, extraction time and stirring rate were investgated and the optimal extraction conditions were established. With the consumption of 3.8 mL of sample solution, the enrichment factors were about 120, 215, and 350 for MeHg, EtHg, and PhHg, respectively. The detection limits were 3.8–0.3 ng mL−1 (as Hg). Precisions (R.S.D. (%), n=7) ranged from 6.4 to 8.9% at the 30-ng mL−1 (as Hg) level. The developed technique was validated by analyzing a certified reference material (DORM-2, dogfish-muscle, NRCC) and an environmental water sample, and the analytical results were satisfactory. |
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| Keywords:organomercury speciation; hollow fiber; liquid-liquid-liquid microextraction; HPLC; sea food |
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