Mercury speciation in seafood using isotope dilution analysis: a review

Abstract

Mercury is a toxic compound that can contaminate humans through food and especially via fish consumption. Mercury's toxicity depends on the species, with methylmercury being the most hazardous form for humans. Hg speciation analysis has been and remains a widely studied subject because of the potential difficulty of preserving the initial distribution of mercury species in the analysed sample. Accordingly, many analytical methods have been developed and most of them incur significant loss and/or cross-species transformations during sample preparation. Therefore, to monitor and correct artefact formations, quantification by isotope dilution is increasingly used and provides significant added value for analytical quality assurance and quality control. This review presents and discusses the two different modes of application of isotope dilution analysis for elemental speciation (i.e. species-unspecific isotope dilution analysis and species-specific isotope dilution analysis) and the different quantification techniques (i.e. classical and multiple spike isotope dilution analyses). Isotope tracers are thus used at different stages of sample preparation to determine the extent of inter-species transformations and correct such analytical artefacts. Finally, a synthesis of the principal methods used for mercury speciation in seafood using isotope dilution analysis is presented.