Speciation of trace arsenic compounds in drinking water with counter-flow electrokinetic supercharging
Doo Soo Chung, Ho Gyun Lee, Young Woo Lee and Joon Yub Kwon
Seoul National University, Korea
: J Diagnos Tech Biomed Anal
Abstract
Chronic ingestion of arsenic in water may cause various diseases, including cancer and keratosis. A guideline for arsenic in drinking water has been set at 10 ppb of total arsenic by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, inorganic forms of arsenic, such as arsenites [As(III)] and arsenates [As(V)], are much more toxic than the organic forms as monomethylarsonic acid (MMA) and dimethylarsinic acid (DMA). Hence the quantitation of specific arsenic species may be more meaningful than the total arsenic determination for the evaluation of the health risks from arsenic-contaminated drinking water. We report a highly sensitive way of arsenic speciation using a commercial Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) instrument equipped with a UV absorbance detector. We used a counter-flow electrokinetic supercharging technique to enhance the detection sensitivity. Electrokinetic supercharging is one of the most powerful sample stacking methods that combines field amplified sample injection and transient isotachophoresis. In counter flow electrokinetic supercharging, a constant counter pressure is applied during sample injection in order to counterbalance the movement of the injected sample zone, obtaining a pronounced increase in the amount of sample injected and the portion of the capillary available for electrophoresis.
Biography
Doo Soo Chung has completed his PhD from Harvard University and Postdoctoral studies from MIT and Iowa State University. He has published more than 100 papers in reputed journals. He has been working on a variety of topics ranging from the realization of molecule optics which controls the motion of molecules with light and Bioanalytical techniques such as Capillary Electrophoresis.
