Title : A study on the Methylmercury (MeHg) analysis in marine products
Abstract:
Purpose: Existing methylmercury analysis has the following defects: it requires a lot of time for pre-processing and solution must be prepared for every analysis. To improve these defects, we used microwave extraction method and acidbase refinement process.
Materials and Method: Analyzing methylmercury content in 670 marine products distributed in Gyeonggi province. We used the samples that contain more than 0.1 mg/kg of methylmercury to compare the effectiveness of the existing method and the new one
Result: The optimal conditions for the microwave-assisted extraction was developed by using 10% NaCl solution as an extraction solution, setting extraction temperature at 500C, and holding 15 minutes extract methylmercury in marine products. And NaOH solution was selected as clean-up substitute instead of L-cysteine solution which is unstable in room temperature. Finally the concentration of the solution was optimized to 2.0 N. Methylmercury was analyzed and compared by the current food code and the proposed method. Detection range of methylmercury were 75.25 (ND ~ 516.93) μg/kg for method of Korea Food Coded and 142.07 (100.14 ~ 244.55) μg/kg for proposed method. The total sample preparation analysis time of proposed method was reduced by more than 25%.
Conclusion: Reproducibility was found to be relatively good in the current method. The proposed microwave-assisted method is expected to be useful as a screening method in methylmercury analysis considering rapidity and economical efficiency. Deep-sea fish, the content of the methylmercury were high, indicating the need for the application of the new test method and continue monitoring of methylmercury content within deep-sea fish products.
