Determination of total and inorganic mercury in whole blood by on-line digestion with flow injection

This paper discusses the use of a commercially available flow injection system for the determination of total and inorganic mercury in whole blood. The procedures are simple, fast, and fully automatic with very limited sample manipulation and low sample consumption. The detection limits were 0.14 and 0.45 mμg/L for total and inorganic mercury measurements, respectively. The relative standard deviations (RSD) were about 10% for total mercury and less than 7% for inorganic mercury determination. The procedures are suitable for epidemiological studies in which large numbers of samples are processed.