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An Interlaboratory Comparison for Total Mercury and Methylmercury in Water at Environmentally Relevant Concentrations

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Abstract

We have conducted an interlaboratory comparison study for total mercury and methylmercury analysis in natural (unspiked) water samples annually for the past 4 years. The samples were primarily freshwater, with the exception of one coastal seawater sample in 2014. The study provided participants with an opportunity to assess the quality of their measurements and the intercomparability of their data with their peers. Data on analytical methods used were collected and used to determine whether any methods yield biased results and should be discontinued. The majority of participants received performance scores of 3 or higher, indicating satisfactory performance and results close to the consensus means. However, the coefficients of variation between labs were greater than 20 % in most cases, which may not be sufficiently precise for multilaboratory environmental research, where the processes being studied may vary by 20 % or less. Total mercury analysis methods that do not use gold amalgamation were shown to be underperforming relative to those that do. No significant correlation was observed between sample storage time or temperature and total mercury recovery. Methylmercury analysis methods that do not use distillation performed poorly relative to those that use distillation.

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Acknowledgments

A great many people have made the Intercomps possible, including all study participants. We especially thank John De Wild at USGS Middleton, Wisconsin, Becky Thorsness and Frank McFarland at Brooks Rand Labs and Milena Horvat at the Jožef Stefan Institute for serving as holding time labs. We thank James FrederickLindenfelser, Jennie Kim, and Candace Kittleson for managing the study logistics. We thank Brittany Nelson, Nathan Andersen, and Frank McFarland for their insight and advice into the statistical analysis. We thank Tricie Hunter and Anna Story for the financial management of the studies. This manuscript was greatly improved by the feedback of two anonymous reviewers.

Conflicts of Interest

Brooks Rand Instruments, the employer of four of the five authors of this paper, is the manufacturer of some of the analytical instruments used by participants in the Intercomps. In addition, Brooks Rand Instruments is a manufacturer of analytical standards for total mercury and methylmercury, which were used by some participants. Brooks Rand Labs, the employer of second author Ms. Carter, is owned in part by Colin Davies, an author on this paper and the owner of Brooks Rand Instruments. The authors carefully designed the methods of this study as outlined in “Section 2” to prevent this conflict of interest from having any influence on the results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brooks Rand Instruments, 4415 6th Ave NW, Seattle, WA, 98107, USA

    J. E. Creswell, V. L. Engel, J. A. Metz & C. A. Davies

  2. Brooks Rand Labs, 3958 6th Ave NW, Seattle, WA, 98107, USA

    A. Carter

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  1. J. E. Creswell
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  2. A. Carter
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  3. V. L. Engel
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  4. J. A. Metz
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  5. C. A. Davies
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. E. Creswell.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Five additional tables and 13 additional figures are available as ESI. These include: Table S1 – Rating system for laboratory performance; Tables S2-S5 – Lists of study participants 2011-2014; Figures S1-S5 – Examples of exploratory statistical plots used to assess improvements in dataset normality with outlier removal; Figures S6-S13 – Results from holding-time analyses for THg and MeHg 2011-2014.

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Creswell, J.E., Carter, A., Engel, V.L. et al. An Interlaboratory Comparison for Total Mercury and Methylmercury in Water at Environmentally Relevant Concentrations. Water Air Soil Pollut 226, 128 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-015-2313-x

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