A decomposition procedure for the determination of arsenic in marine samples.

The use of wet and dry ashing procedures to decompose marine biological tissues and to degrade organoarsenic compounds to inorganic arsenic for analysis by zinc-column arsine generation and atomic-absorption spectrophotometry was investigated. Wet ashing with nitric, sulphuric and perchloric acids (10:2:3 v/v) released the largest percentage of arsenic from fish tissue and quantitatively degraded methylated and other organoarsenic compounds to inorganic arsenic. The arsenic concentrations found when standard reference materials were ashed with this acid mixture were in agreement with the certified values.