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.l. 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 HNO 3 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 (HNO 3 , H ^ S 0 4 > HC10 4 ,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 without 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 1 N HC1 containing cupric chloride. In his 
study, no attempt was made to solubilize the fish muscle tissue. Therefore, we 
reasoned that a simple elution with 5 percent HNO 3 might be sufficient to 
extract metals from small marine organisms. The feasibility of extracting Cu by 
this elution technique was tested on the polychaete, Neanthes arenaceodentata. 
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