Microdetermination of mercury in biological samples. Part III. Automated determination of mercury in urine, fish and blood samples

Abstract

An extension of the use of the automatic mercury analyser published earlier is discussed. Wet-digestion procedures for blood and fish samples that are also applicable to other types of sample are described. With the standard procedures recommended it is possible to determine mercury concentrations in blood down to about the normal values for unexposed persons, i.e., about 5 ng g^–1, and mercury in fish down to the 0·1 µg g^–1 level, with an acceptable standard error. Comparative studies between our method and the methods of activation analysis and gas chromatography have shown good agreement.