THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANALYTICAL METHODS FOR THE ELEMENTAL DETERMINATION OF BIOTIC INDICATORS PRESENT IN AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS

Abstract

In our research, we investigate the accumulation extent of the inorganic contaminants accessing the aquatic food chain, including zooplankton and fish species through model experiments. In this paper, we discuss the preliminary experiments considering the measurement of iron and manganese accumulated in Artemia sp. after hatched and reared in metal contaminated model media. The goal is to develop the sample preparation and analytical methods required for the determination of metals adsorbed in the studied organisms. We proved that rinsing the zooplankton organisms three times with 2 mL per grams (wet weight Artemia) of rinsing solution prior to the sample preparation process decreased the possibility of analytical error. European Reference Material of fish tissue (ERM^®-BB422) was used to validate the applied sample preparation and atomic spectrometric methods. The average recovery value for the measured elements by open system digestion with conventional heating was 96% and 92% with microwave digestion. With MP-AES 99% and 92% were gained, respectively. According to our results, no significant difference occurred between the digestion in open system with conventional heating and microwave assisted digestion as well as the cost effective microwave plasma atomic emission spectrometry (MP-AES) proved to be appropriate for the routine quantitative analysis of adsorbed elements in zooplankton organisms and fish tissues.