What is Speciation Analysis?
Speciation is the process of separating and quantifying different molecular versions of a compound, which can exhibit very different physiochemical properties, including varying toxicities.
Speciation analysis covers many areas including environmental protection and the food and drug administration. To analyze species in a sample requires Certifed Reference Materials for sample verifcation and method validation. Many speciation standards are available in today’s market, but most of the speciation standards are not certifed or analyzed with a state-of-the-art ICP, ICP-MS and LC-ICP-MS.
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Download the catalogue of “Analytical Standards for Single & Dual Speciation Analysis”.
What is the Importance of Chemical Species?
Chemical and elemental species are important in many fields of science and health. Human health and nutrition can be influenced by the presence or absence of certain chemical species such as iron, selenium, arsenic, and mercury. In human nutrition, the different forms of iron can have various amounts of biological activity. Many iron supplements contain these biologically available forms of iron such as ferrous fumarate instead of more biologically inert forms such as ferrous oxide. Selenium species have been associated with the treatment of disease. Studies have shown the value of organoselenium compounds in treatment of tumor growth and the scavenging of free radicals.
Toxicity plays a role in the importance of speciation and the need to quantify elemental species. Some species of heavy metals can be highly toxic to humans and animals. For example, organic mercury compounds are more toxic than inorganic mercury compounds. The reverse condition is true for the heavy metal, arsenic, whose organic forms (MMA, DMA, arsenocholine and arsenobetaine) are much less toxic than the inorganic forms (aresine, arsenate and arsenite). A median lethal dose (LD50) of arsenobetaine is over 10000 mg/kg whereas the LD50 of arsine is just mg/kg ppm.
Chromium can play both a negative and positive role in human health. Traditionally, chromium in the form of trivalent chromium, or Cr (III), has been considered to be a dietary supplement. However, recent studies now contend that it may not play as important a role in human health to warrant supplementation. Another form of chromium, however, has been found to have a definite negative impact on human health. Hexavalent chromium or Cr (VI) is potentially carcinogenic and has an oral toxicity between 50 and 150 µg/kg.
Species toxicity is influenced by three factors: absorption, distribution and biotransformation. If a chemical or elemental species is easily absorbed by an organism, that species becomes more biologically available and therefore potentially toxic. The ability of a chemical species to cross biological barriers (i.e. blood/brain, intestines, and cell membranes) increases toxicity. Finally, if a chemical species can undergo modification, accumulation or excretion from biological systems, toxicity is affected.
Why is Speciation Analysis important for food, environmental and pharmaceutical industries?
Speciation analysis is important to these industries when measuring the total amount of an element is insufficient. Identifying the different species and concentrations of those species provides a more informed understanding of the environmental or health related impact associated with a particular sample.
What are some of the elements requiring speciation analysis?
Arsenic, mercury, chromium, selenium, and organotin
What instruments are used to perform speciation analysis?
IC-ICP-MS and LCMS
Analytical Standards for Single & Dual Speciation Analysis
Speciation analysis has become common in many testing fields, including in the environmental, food and pharmaceutical testing labs. To analyze species in a sample requires Certified Reference Materials (CRMs) for sample verification and method validation. Many speciation standards are available in today’s market, but most of them are not certified or analyzed with a state-of-the-art ICP, ICP-MS or LC-ICP-MS. SPEX CertiPrep offers a wide variety of speciation standards, certified to the strictest ISO Guide 34 guidelines, and tested on our own LC-ICP-MS.