Speciation Analysis of Mercury in Water and Human Urine Using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry after Solid Phase Disk Extraction

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the field of mercury speciation analysis. Mercury speciation analysis of water or urine matrices are necessary for solving various environmental, biological or clinical problems. Due to the complexity of sample matrices and the low levels of mercury species, an extraction step, such as liquid-liquid extraction or solid phase cartridge extraction, is required for Hg speciation analysis to isolate and enrich analyte species from sample matrices. As a new experimental configuration, disks or membranes for solid phase extraction (SPE) have been utilized in recent years for the preparation of many different organic and environmental samples. However,the literature survey revealed that solid-phase disk extraction has received little attention in the field of elemental speciation analysis.