Application of butyltin speciation by HPLC/ICP-MS to marine sediments

Abstract Over the last ten years research on the speciation of butyltins has made great progress. However, although numerous couplings have been successfully developed, the stage of application to samples from the environment remains a difficult one to overcome. In this study a HPLC/ICP‐MS coupling is presented and applied to the speciation of tributyl‐, dibutyl‐ and monobutyltin. This method, complemented with acetic acid extraction, has been monitored on two certified reference materials: PACS‐1 reference sediment and CRM 462. From the results obtained, the method presented here can be considered as offering interesting prospects for environmental studies (detection threshold = 5 ng Sn g‐1 for a test sample of 3 g of dry sediment).