Extract:

To investigate and the potential risk of MeHg+ in a more direct manner, a method for its determination in blood would be a valuable tool for the toxicological and medical community. However, determination is problematic due to the low concentrations of MeHg+ and the complex nature of the blood matrix which can interfere with both the sample preparation procedure and the analysis. In this presentation, two approaches to mercury speciation, GC and HPLC-ICP-MS were developed and scrutinized for lyophilised blood samples (which contain either heparin or EDTA as anticoagulant). Evaluation of the methods was performed using the NIST bovine blood SRM 966 and/or recovery experiments.