ORGANOMETALLIC SPECIES OF THE ELEMENTS TIN, MERCURY AND LEAD IN SEDIMENTS OF THE LONGITUDINAL PROFILE OF THE RIVER ELBE

In 1992, for the first time, a whole longitudinal sediment profile of the River Elbe from the Czech Republic to the North Sea has been sampled within the framework of the project ''Registration and assessment of harmful substances in the River Elbe: Heavy metals and heavy metal species''. Organometallic species of the elements tin, mercury and lead have been determined. The species have been extracted together from the wet sediments using hexane after an in-situ ethylation with sodium tetraethylborate (NaBEt(4)). Gas chromatography-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (GC-ICP-MS), a very sensitive hyphenated technique for multielemental speciation analysis, has been used for their separation and detection.