Speciation of inorganic and organotin compounds in biological samples by liquid chromatography with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometric detection.

This paper describes the effect of inorganic tin chloride on the separation of trimethyl-, tributyl- and triphenyltin-chlorides by reversed-phase ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography with detection by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The detection limits are 1.6 pg, 1.5 pg and 2.3 pg as tin for trimethyltin, tributyltin and triphenyltin, respectively. The relative standard deviation for ten injections of 20 ng of the tin compounds was less than 5%. Inorganic tin was held strongly on the columns used, to a greater extent on the silica column compared to the polymer column. Extraction and determination of tributyltin and triphenyltin as chlorides in fish tissue (certified reference material) and tuna fish (grocery store) were performed. The recovery study from fish tissue showed an efficiency of over 90% for both tributyltin and triphenyltin and over 60% recovery for spiked tuna.