A SIMPLE ELUTION TECHNIQUE FOR 



THE ANALYSIS OF COPPER IN 



NEANTHES ARENACEODENTATA 



Gerald L. Hoffman and Raymond M. Zanni 



U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 



Environmental Research Laboratory 



South Ferry Road 



Narragansett, R.I. 02882 



ABSTRACT 



It is common practice to dissolve the tissue of marine organisms completely 

 with acid prior to metal analysis with atomic absorption. However, it may not 

 be necessary to completely destroy the organic matrix with acids prior to metal 

 analysis. It has been determined that a simple 5 percent HNO3 elution of a 

 freeze-dried Neanthes arenaceodentata is sufficient to extract Cu quantitatively 

 from this marine polychaete. This type of elution. rather than complete 

 dissolution, has several advantages when analyzing small (1 mg to 10 mg) 

 organisms. The two major advantages are (1) blank values are lower, and 

 (2) the technique is less tedious and time consuming. 



INTRODUCTION 



High temperature ashing and/or various acids (HNO3, H2SO4, HC104,etc.) 

 are generally used to break down, oxidize, and solubilize marine organisms 

 prior to metal analysis by atomic absorption. If metal levels are high, and the 

 organisms weigh several grams, the techniques of dry ashing and wet ashing are 

 usually successful. However, solubilizing individual organisms that weigh 1 mg 

 to 10 mg with standard techniques uathout contaminating the final solutions 

 for the element of interest is difficult. 



Matsunaga (1) has shown that it was possible to extract Hg completely from 

 various types of fish muscle with IN HCl containing cupric chloride. In liis 

 study, no attempt was made to solubilize the fish muscle tissue. Therefore, we 

 reasoned that a simple elution with 5 percent HNO3 might be sufficient to 

 extract metals from small marine organisms. The feasibility of extracting Cu by 

 this elution technique was tested on the polychaete, A^ec«r/?es arenaceodentata. 



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