Consideration and influence of complexed forms of mercury species on the reactivity patterns determined by speciated isotope dilution model approaches: A case for natural biological reference materials

The processes driving the inadvertent transformations of inorganic mercury (iHg) and methylmercury (MeHg) in cryogenically homogenized fresh-frozen (FF) and freeze-dried (FD) biological standard reference materials (SRM) were investigated using alkaline digestion, derivatization and gas chromatography inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (GC-ICP-MS). Labile inorganic mercury (201iHg) and methylmercury (Me202Hg) isotopic standards and their cysteine-complexed analogs (201Hg(Cys) 2 and Me202HgCys) were used in a double-spike speciated isotope dilution (SID) model to document the influence of complexing ligands on the equilibration, the reactivity and the transformation processes between isotopic mercury species and their endogenous analogs. Cysteine-complexed and labile Me202Hg spiking standards displayed similar equilibration processes in both classes of materials, leading to accurate MeHg determinations with negligible methylation transformations. Labile 201iHg standards provided accurate iHg concentration results in both material series, although an apparent demethylation reaction specific of FF materials was detected, with a negligible effect in FD materials. Cysteine-complexed 201iHg standards led to higher but inaccurate iHg concentrations and higher demethylation yields in both materials. This comparison illustrated a significant influence of complexing ligands on the equilibration processes between labile and/or complexed 201iHg species and their endogenous analogs. The derivatization step was found to catalyze these non-equilibrium conditions with different derivatization yields between labile and complexed iHg species, whereas no differences were observed for MeHg species. When complexation disparities existed in solution between 201iHg species and their endogenous analogs, this process specifically affected the determination of 200/201iHg ratios relative to 200/202iHg, 200/201MeHg and 200/202iHg ratios, which are all involved in the double-spike SID model to establish transformation yields and mercury species concentrations. This process and the influence of demethylating agents were presumably responsible for the apparent demethylation reaction only observed in FF materials. This result gave rise to several questions on the influence of freeze-drying procedures on the lability/complexation patterns of mercury species and/or on the activity of demethylating agents. A complementary analytical step consisting of maximizing the equilibrium co