Speciation of organic selenium compounds using reversed-phase liquid chromatography and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Part III. Application of a sector field instrument with low and high mass resolution for selenium speciation in herring gull eggs

A HPLC procedure based on reversed phase chromatography with methanol as the eluent for the speciation of organic Se compounds has been developed to study the appearance of Se species in herring gull eggs collected from mud flats of the North Sea. The extraction of Se species by using hot water was limited to a recovery of 8% only. The multielement capability of ICP-MS was exploited to obtain elemental correlation, and for Se compounds (selenocystine, selenocystamine, selenomethionine, selenoethionine) were used as standards. Among these only the presence of selenocystamine was evident, and correlations of this fraction with Cu, As and S became obvious.