Speciation of butyltins in fish and sediment by means of gas chromatography with flame photometric detection

A modified method for the determination of tributyl-, dibutyl-, and monobutyl-tin in fish and sediment samples is proposed. The samples are digested with hydrochloric acid and the butyltin compounds are extracted into a tropolone solution in pentane and pentylated by a Grignard reaction. The products are cleaned up by washing with a sodium hyrdoxide solution, dried over sodium sulphate, concentrated by evaporation and analysed by gas chromatography with flame photometric detection, using an interence filter at 610 nm. Problems peculiar to the fish and sediment samples are overcome by this improved clean-up procedure. The limit of detection for tributyltin in fish is 0.04 m?g g^?1 and the reproducibility at 0.06 μg g^?1, expressed as the relative standard deviation, is 6.8%. Contaminated sediment samples were found to contain the mixed methylbutyl-tin compounds Me₂BuSn⁺ and MeBu₂Sn⁺.