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Discrepancies between isotope ratio infrared spectroscopy and isotope ratio mass spectrometry for the stable isotope analysis of plant and soil waters
Author(s) -
West Adam G.,
Goldsmith Gregory R.,
Brooks Paul D.,
Dawson Todd E.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
rapid communications in mass spectrometry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.528
H-Index - 136
eISSN - 1097-0231
pISSN - 0951-4198
DOI - 10.1002/rcm.4597
Subject(s) - chemistry , isotope ratio mass spectrometry , isotope analysis , stable isotope ratio , isotope , environmental chemistry , mass spectrometry , charcoal , contamination , analytical chemistry (journal) , chromatography , ecology , physics , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , biology
The use of isotope ratio infrared spectroscopy (IRIS) for the stable hydrogen and oxygen isotope analysis of water is increasing. While IRIS has many advantages over traditional isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS), it may also be prone to errors that do not impact upon IRMS analyses. Of particular concern is the potential for contaminants in the water sample to interfere with the spectroscopy, thus leading to erroneous stable isotope data. Water extracted from plant and soil samples may often contain organic contaminants. The extent to which contaminants may interfere with IRIS and thus impact upon data quality is presently unknown. We tested the performance of IRIS relative to IRMS for water extracted from 11 plant species and one organic soil horizon. IRIS deviated considerably from IRMS for over half of the samples tested, with deviations as large as 46‰ (δ 2 H) and 15.4‰ (δ 18 O) being measured. This effect was reduced somewhat by using activated charcoal to remove organics from the water; however, deviations as large as 35‰ (δ 2 H) and 11.8‰ (δ 18 O) were still measured for these cleaned samples. Interestingly, the use of activated charcoal to clean water samples had less effect than previously thought for IRMS analyses. Our data show that extreme caution is required when using IRIS to analyse water samples that may contain organic contaminants. We suggest that the development of new cleaning techniques for removing organic contaminants together with instrument‐based software to flag potentially problematic samples are necessary to ensure accurate plant and soil water analyses using IRIS. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.