Determination of organic mercury species in soils by high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection

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Abstract
Reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection was optimized for the simultaneous separation and quantification of nine organic mercury compounds: methyl-, ethyl-, phenyl-, methoxyethyl-, ethoxyethyl-, benzoic and tolylmercury, mersalylic acid and nitromersol. The nine compounds were successfully separated on octadecylsilane columns (200 × 3 mm i.d.) by gradient elution with a methanol–water mixture ranging from 30 to 50% v/v. The detection limits for the various compounds are in the range 7.0–95.1 µg dm–3. For the extraction of five organomercurials from spiked soils, eight different extraction solutions were tested to differentiate between the total content and the available/soluble fraction of the analytes. Ammonium acetate solutions (1 mol dm–3) and water proved to be suitable agents for the estimation of the available and soluble fractions of methyl-, ethyl-, benzoic, methoxyethyl- and ethoxyethylmercury. For the determination of the total content of methyl- and benzoic mercury in soils, solutions of potassium iodide (1 mol dm–3)–ascorbic acid (0.1 mol dm–3) and oxalic acid (1 mol dm–3) provided recoveries in the range 53–81%. None of the solutions tested is suitable for the extraction of ethyl-, methoxyethyl- and ethoxyethylmercury.

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