A microwave-assisted sequential extraction of water and dilute acid soluble arsenic species from marine plant and animal tissues

This paper describes the use of dilute nitric acid for the extraction and quantification of arsenic species. A number of extractants (e.g. water, 1.5 M orthophosphoric acid, methanol–water and dilute nitric acid) were tested for the extraction of arsenic from marine biological samples, such as plants that have proved difficult to quantitatively extract. Dilute 2% (v/v) nitric acid was found to give the highest recoveries of arsenic overall and was chosen for further optimisation. The optimal extraction conditions for arsenic were 2% (v/v) HNO3, 6 min−1, 90 °C. Arsenic species were found to be stable under the optimised conditions with the exception of the arsenoriboses which degraded to a product eluting at the same retention time as glycerol arsenoribose. Good agreement was found between the 2% (v/v) HNO3 extraction and the methanol–water extraction for the certified reference material DORM-2 (AB 17.1 and 16.2 μg g−1, respectively, and TETRA 0.27 and 0.25 μg g−1, respectively), which were in close agreement with the certified concentrations of AB 16.4 ± 1.1 μg g−1 and TETRA 0.248 ± 0.054 μg g−1.To preserve the integrity of arsenic species, a sequential extraction technique was developed where the previously methanol–water extracted pellet was further extracted with 2% (v/v) HNO3 under the optimised conditions. Increases in arsenic recoveries between 13% and 36% were found and speciation of this faction revealed that only inorganic and simple methylated species were extracted.