DIN EN 16801:2016-07

This document (EN 16801:2016) has been prepared by Technical Committee CEN/TC 275 "Food analysis - Horizontal methods", the secretariat of which is held by DIN (Germany). The responsible German committee is Working Committee NA 057-01-09 AA "Elemente und ihre Verbindungen" ("Elements and their chemical species") at the DIN Standards Committee Food and Agricultural Products (NAL). This European Standard describes a method for the determination of monomethylmercury (MMHg) in foodstuffs of marine origin. The method has been validated in an interlaboratory test on mussel tissue, squid muscle, crab claw muscle, dog fish liver, whale meat, cod muscle and Greenland halibut muscle (all freeze-dried) with mass fractions from 0,04 mg/kg to 3,6 mg/kg dry weight. The sample is spiked with an appropriate amount of Hg-isotope enriched MMHg and digested using tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH). After pH adjustment, derivatisation and extraction, the organic phase is analysed using GC-ICP-MS. The GC separates the different mercury species before the derivatised species (ethylmethylmercury) is atomised and ionised in the high temperature by the ICP. The ions are extracted from the plasma by a set of sampler and skimmer cones and transferred to a mass spectrometer where the ions are separated by their mass/charge ratio and determined by a pulse-count and/or analogue detector. The result is calculated using the isotope dilution equation.