Determination of heavy metals in marine sediments using MAME-GFAAS

Abstract

A new green method has been developed for the extraction of the pseudo-total content of the heavy metals Ni, Cu, Cr, Pb, and Cd from marine sediments using a mixture of biodegradable micellar media (SDS, Triton X-100) as extractants and graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS) for their determination. This work is the first one that uses only surfactants as extractants, without the addition of chelating agents to increase the extraction efficiency of the method, proving to be effective in the extraction of metals from these types of matrices. The proposed method has shown high recovery percentages for all the metals considered (>68%), good linearity and reproducibility (RSD < 5.9%), as well as detection limits ranging from 0.06 to 2.78 μg g⁻¹. The method was applied to the determination of the heavy metals under study in samples with different physicochemical properties. Finally, our results were compared with those obtained using microwave assisted extraction – graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (MAE/GFAAS) described in ISO 11047:1998 obtaining comparable results.