Distribution of total and organic mercury in superficial soils in the upper Manzanares River watershed, Sucre State, Venezuela

Abstract

Total and organic mercury contents were determined from samples of surface soils (0-5 cm), sieved at ≤63 μm, collected from 10 different locations in the upper Manzanares River watershed, using cold vapor atomic absorption spectroscopy. Methylmercury was determined using a HPLC-UV detector. The mean total mercury concentration was 1.3 μg. g-1, a value permitted by the Canadian environment quality guidelines for farming soils, but high for European standards. Using certified reference materials, we verified that a modification of the method described by Qian et al. (2000) was effective for organic mercury extraction, with a recovery of 92.17% for DORM-2 and 92.11% for TORT-2. This modified method was applied to soil samples, obtaining concentrations of 0.5-1.0 μg.g-1 of organic mercury. The parameters for determining methylmercury using HPLC-UV were optimized; the best results were obtained with a 4.6 mm × 25 cm Zorbax CN- column, with a mobile phase of 70/30 V/V of methanol: ammonium acetate 0.05 mol.l-1, with a flow rate of 0.5 ml.min-1; the methylmercury was detected at 4.99 min retention time. Methylmercury was not found in the soil samples. Using the certified reference material we proved that the method used produced reliable results. The analysis confirmed the existence of mercury in this farming area.