Sample pre-treatment and extraction methods that are crucial to arsenic speciation in algae and aquatic plants

There is considerable interest in analytical speciation of arsenic in algae and aquatic plants. The analytical methods include several steps [e.g., pre-treatment, extraction and final measurement, mainly by liquid chromatography coupled to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MS) or to MS with several detectors]. Most methods in the literature do not report data on pre-treatment and extraction, which are crucial steps to assure the reliability of results.Using information covering the period since 2000, we summarize and discuss sample handling, cleaning, drying and powdering of fresh samples and the later extraction of arsenic species. We also include extraction data on edible algae.