Atmospheric Deposition: Sampling Procedures, Analytical Methods, and Main Recent Findings from the Scientific Literature

Table 5

Analysis of total mercury and particulate phase mercury.

Total mercury, THg			References
Sample pretreatment	Digestion in HNO3, BrCl oxidation, and NH2OH·HCl prereduction		[83]
Preconcentration	SnCl2 reduction, purging, and collection on gold traps
Detection	CVAFS
Detection limit	3s of total blank at typical sample volumes
Quality assurance/control	Determination of procedural blanks and analytical recovery
Particulate phase mercury, Hg(p)
Miniaturized device combines quartz fiber filter and the quartz wool plug technologies and serves as both particulate trap (during sampling) and pyrolyzer (during analysis) for airborne particulate-phase mercury species			[85–92]
Detection	CVAFS
Graphite plate collection technique coupled with Zeeman electrothermal atomic absorption spectroscopy			[85–92]
Design	Plate for atomization in PdCl2-coated pyrolytic graphite tube with chemical modifier consisting of a 5% (NH4)2S solution
Collection efficiency	99%
Detection	ETAAS
Quality assurance/control	A better time-resolved procedure with the higher accuracy (±8%)