Effect of seafood consumption on the urinary level of total hydride-generating arsenic compounds. Instability of arsenobetaine and arsenocholine

Abstract

Arsenobetaine and arsenocholine are considered to be non-toxic and are present as a relatively large proportion of total arsenic in seafoods, and they do not respond to hydride generation. The present study describes the effect of seafood consumption on the urinary concentration of hydride-generating arsenic compounds measured by a newly developed flow injection atomic absorption spectrometric (FI-AAS) method. Consumption of plaice, pighvar and tunny resulted in a 2-fold increase, and consumption of mussels produced a 6-fold increase in the urinary level of hydride-generating arsenic compounds. Hence, a person who has consumed mussels may be suspected of being occupationally or environmentally exposed, if the level of consumption of this seafood is unknown. As the FI-AAS method cannot be used to detect arsenobetaine and arsenocholine, the observed increase in urinary concentration of hydride-generating arsenic compounds after consumption of seafood must originate either from hydride-generating arsenic compounds in the seafood or from degraded arsenobetaine or arsenocholine. The present study has demonstrated that both arsenobetaine and arsenocholine are unstable when incubated in daylight in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, i.e., an oxidizing environment. Hence, it is tempting to speculate that arsenobetaine could be converted into hydride-generating arsenic compounds during storage or cooking of seafood. The feasibility of speciation methods based on high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) separation and on-line analysis by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) and FI-AAS was also investigated. The FI-AAS system is approximately 35 times more sensitive to the hydride-generating arsenic species than the ICP-AES system. Consequently, an HPLC–FI-AAS speciation method could be useful in analyses for arsenic species in urine from highly exposed persons, or persons suspected of being unable to, or having a reduced ability to, methylate inorganic arsenic compounds.