Hyphenated techniques in environmental speciation analysis.
Résumé
A review. The recognition of the fact that the chem., biol. and toxicol. properties of an element are critically dependent on the form in which the element occurs in the sample has spurred a rapid development of an area of anal. chem. referred to as speciation anal. A fundamental tool used for speciation studies is the combination of a chromatog. sepn. technique, that ensures that the analyte compd. leaves the column unaccompanied by other species of the analyte element, with at. spectrometry, permitting a sensitive and specific detection of the target element. Recent advances in the application of these hyphenated (coupled) techniques for species-selective detn. of: (i) volatile organo-metallic (Sn, Hg, Pb) anthropogenic contaminants and (ii) nonvolatile organometalloid (As, Se) compds. and heavy metal complexes in environmental matrixes are discussed. Particular attention is given to the limitations related to chromatog. signal identification due to unavailability of stds. for many species since a large no. of the naturally synthesized compds. have not yet been identified and characterized. The potential of mol. mass spectrometry for this purpose is demonstrated. [on SciFinder(R)]