Multielemental speciation of As, Se, Sb and Te by HPLC-ICP-MS

Abstract An anion exchange HPLC-ICP-MS procedure allowing the simultaneous multielemental speciation analysis of arsenic, selenium, antimony and tellurium has been developed. Four arsenic species (As III , As V , monomethylarsonic acid and dimethylarsinic acid), two selenium species (Se IV and Se VI ) may be determined in a single run as well as one antimony (Sb V ) and one tellurium species (Te VI ). Alternatively Sb and/or Te may be used as internal standards for As and Se speciation studies. Optimisation of ICP-MS conditions led to satisfactory relative (0.01 (Sb V ) to 1.8 (Se VI ) ng ml −1 ) and absolute detection limits (1–180 pg). Reproducibility ranged from 3.1 to 5.6% and the linearity was verified in the 0–200 ng ml −1 range.