Determination of total tin and organotin compounds in shellfish by ICP-MS

A method based on microwave digestion and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometric (ICP-MS) analysis was established for the determination of total tin in shellfish samples. Good linearity of the calibration curves was obtained for tin elements (r = 1.0000). Detection limit for Sn was 34.6 ng/g. Total tin concentrations in these samples ranged from non-detectable to 0.45 μg/g. High-performance liquid chromatography hyphenated with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS) was applied to the simultaneous determination of five organotin compounds in the shellfish samples. The fresh and freeze-dried shellfish samples were treated by ultrasonic extraction with two different extraction solvents. Four organotin compounds including dibutyltin (DBT), tributyltin (TBT), diphenyltin (DPhT) and triphenyltin (TPhT) in shellfish samples were detected. It was found that the dominate species in the samples were tributyltin (TBT) and triphenyltin (TPhT).