Determination of Methylmercury in Meat Products by GC-MS

This paper presents a gas chromatographic(GC) method method to determine methylmercury in meat products.Samples were extracted by sonication with hydrochloric acid,and the resulting extract was then salted out by the addition of sodium chloride and further extracted with benzene so as to separate methylmercury prior to detection with an electron capture detector(ECD).The limit of detection of the presented method was 0.01 mg/kg,and average spike recoveries ranged from 86.4% to 98.9% with relative standard deviations of 1.31% to 3.99%.This method was rapid,simple and sensitive.