Speciation of essential and toxic elements in edible mushrooms by SEC-UV-ICP-MS

WUILLOUD, RODOLFO G.; KANNAMKUMARATH, SASI S.; CARUSO, JOSEPH A.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Conferencia; 2004 WINTER CONFERENCE ON PLASMA SPECTROCHEMISTRY; 2004

WINTER CONFERENCE ON PLASMA SPECTROCHEMISTRY

Edible mushrooms are considered as healthy foods, low in calories, abundant in vegetable proteins, vitamins and minerals. Medicinal value of mushrooms in traditional Chinese medicine has been well known for a long time. Among the several effects of mushrooms, it?s role in promoting good health, vitality and increasing the body?s adaptive response have been documented. Other applications of mushrooms have involved food therapy and the suggestions that they may be used in preventing diseases such as hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and cancer.Since the early 1970?s studies have been performed to determine the occurrence of trace elements in mushrooms. Most of these studies were developed to evaluate the possible use of mushrooms as bioindicators of environmental pollution and identifying those edible mushrooms, which could accumulate elements in high concentrations. High concentrations of many different elements of toxicological and nutritional interest in mushroom have been reported. However, information about speciation of other elements of toxicological or nutritional interest is not yet reported.In this work, fractionation of soluble species of Ag, Ba, Bi, Br, Cd, Cu, Fe, Hg, I, P, Pb, Ni, and Zn found in different edible mushrooms was performed by on-line coupling of size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) and ICP-MS. Different extraction procedures were developed with NaOH, HCl, and double distilled water. The separation was developed on a Superdex 75 column (300 x 10 mm) with 0.010 mol/L CAPS buffer at pH 10 as the mobile phase. All the variables involved into the SEC separation, ICP-MS detection, and extraction procedures were studied and their effects evaluated.