Copper and Mercury in Food, Biological and Pharmaceutical Samples:

An alternative spectrophotometric method was optimized and validated for the estimation of mer- cury using diethyldithiocarbamate (DDTC), a common reagent, widely used for the preconcentra- tion and isolation of metal ions in complex matrices followed by their estimation by varied tech- niques. Diethyldithiocarbamate forms yellow Cu(DDTC)2 with copper and white Hg(DDTC)2 with mercury (having d10 system) which are extracted in CCl4. The UV-visible spectrum of Cu(DDTC)2 is very stable at pH 5.0 and has a maximum absorption (λmax) at 435 nm. Hg(DDTC)2 is more stable than Cu(DDTC)2. Estimation of mercury is based on a quantitative displacement of Cu(II) of Cu(DDTC)2 with the addition of mercury followed by the measurement of reduced absorbance. Primarily, method was optimized and validated for the estimation of copper. Therefore, simulta- neous determination of Cu(II) and Hg(II) in mixture is proposed fractionating the extract. The molar specific coefficient (e) for the mercury was 1.4 × 104 mol−1∙L∙cm−1 and for copper was 3.16 × 10 5 mol −1 ∙L∙cm −1 at 435 nm. The detection limits of Cu 2+ and Hg 2+ were 0.023 µg∙mL −1 and 0.029 µg∙mL−1, respectively. The calibration curve shows good linearity of 0.02 - 12.0 and 0.02 - 15.0 µg∙mL −1 for the Cu 2+ and Hg 2+ determination, respectively. Proposed technique was applied to food, biological and pharmaceutical samples for the determination of Cu(II) and Hg(II).