revised final - Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry ...

MERCURY 493
6. ANALYTICAL METHODS
and Dasgupta 1989, 1990; Vesterberg 1991). Methods using AFS (Corns et al. 1994; Vermeir et al.
1991a, 1991b), ASV (Liu et al. 1990), and isotope-dilution spark source (IDSS) MS have also been
developed. CVAAS is sensitive (low-ppt), reliable (recovery is >76% and precision is generally 90% recovery), and precision (7% RSD or better) were obtained with AFS when samples were digested
in a closed container in a microwave (Vermeir et al. 1991a, 1991b). Good results have also been
achieved with ASV (Liu et al. 1990) and IDSSMS (Moody and Paulsen 1988). The precision of these
methods is especially high (90%. Both these methods require
predigestion of the sample. As an alternative to CVAAS, total mercury determination in blood and urine
can be performed by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) or ICP-mass
spectrometry (Buneaux et al. 1992; Kalamegham and Ash 1992). These methods are sensitive, with
detection limits in the sub-ppb range. Recoveries (>90%) and precision (