methyl mercury gc ms

[mauricio]

Hello

I need to determine methyl mercury in tissues.
It is possible using gc ms ?
It is necessary derivatized ?

Thanks

[Don_Hilton]

A quick google search will turn up links like:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17404801 methyl mercury by isotope dilution GC/MS from fish or
http://www.gnest.org/Journal/Vol8_No1/p ... OG_397.pdf for several mercury species in sewage by GC/MS or
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17242887 for methyl mercury in fish by two techniques - one of which is GC/MS

and there are many more. I entered "Methyl Mercury GC/MS" for the search string.

[jerole]

I have been analysing Methylmercury in fish samples by GC/MS. If you give me your email or write me at jerole(at)gmail.com I can send you some information.

[AICMM]

mauricio,

Very interested to hear how this turns out. Please keep us posted.

Best regards.

[jerole]

Concerning the derivatization, you can use tetraethyl- or tetrapropylborate. I usually use tetraethylborate, it's less expensive and much more stable than the tetrapropylborate.
There are a few papers that mention that you can have transmethylation processes during the derivatization with tetraethylborate in presence of halides. Though I wonder why this would happen with tetraethylborate, but not with tetraproylborate. I have been working with both and I never noticed any different behaviour.

More important might be the extraction process. If the conditions are too harsh you may decompose the Methylmercury to Inorganic Mercury.