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An international intercomparison exercise for total mercury in seawater
Author(s) -
Cossa D,
Courau P
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
applied organometallic chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.53
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1099-0739
pISSN - 0268-2605
DOI - 10.1002/aoc.590040109
Subject(s) - chemistry , ampoule , mercury (programming language) , methylmercury , seawater , environmental chemistry , nitric acid , chloride , chromatography , inorganic chemistry , organic chemistry , computer science , programming language , geology , oceanography , bioaccumulation
Abstract Two 30 dm 3 coastal seawater samples were collected in September 1983. One was acidified, homogenized and divided among 50 500‐cm 3 glass ampoules. The second was spiked with 612ng of mercury added as methylmercury chloride, acidified, homogenized and divided among 50 500‐cm 3 glass ampoules. All these operations were performed under a mercury‐free atmosphere. A single sample from each set was sent to each of 37 laboratories; 21 of them submitted their results of a ‘total’ mercury concentation determination. The consensus values and their confidence limits are 6.0 ± 1.6 and 24.2 ± 2.8 ng dm −3 for the natural and the spiked samples respectively. Eleven laboratories reported reliable quantitative results (within ± 2 SD ) for the natural (unspiked) sample, and 12 for the spiked sample. In addition, ten laboratories give sets of results within ± 2 SD of the consensus values. Storage for up to four months of methylmercury spiked samples with 1.4% nitric acid (0.3 mol dm −3 ) at room temperature is, alone, an unsuitable treatment for releasing mercury from its monomethyl compounds.