An improved method for the determination of total arsenic in seafood using wet digestion coupling with atomic fluorescence spectrometer

Objective:To establish a stable and precise method for the determination of total arsenic in seafood.Methods: After a pretreatment with nitric acid/perchloric acid/sulfuric acid tri-acid digestion process,we used atomic fluorescence spectrometer methodology to detect total As in seafood.Results: Under the optimized pretreatment process and detection conditions: KBH4 concentraton,2%(w/w);lamp current,60 mA;flow rate of carrying gas,400 ml/min;carrying flow,5% HCl,wide linear relationship was achieved in the range of 0 μg/L~40.0 μg/L with relative coefficient of 0.9998 and the detection limit was estimated to be 0.072 μg/L.The proposed procedure was validated by applying it for the determination of total As in Certified Reference Material GBW08573 and GBW08517(China).Results were satisfactory with RSDs of 6 replicate experiments less than 3.8%.The proposed method was sucessfully applied to detect total As in seafood supplied by Ningbo hotels.Conclusion: The present method is precise and reliable for the determination of total As in seafood.