Application of capillary electrophoresis for the determination of organoarsenicals in poultry farm waters

One way in which arsenic is introduced into the environment is through organoarsenicals. Organoarsenicals are used as feed additives in animal feeding operations. In poultry birds, they prevent diseases and accelerate growth. Examples of these organoarsenicals are roxarsone, arsinilic acid, nitarsone and carbasone. With poultry, consumption of organoarsenicals pose no health threat as 95% are excreted unchanged but the degradation products - arsenics, are toxic when accumulated in the human body system and can cause acute poisoning and cancer. This also leads to arsenic contamination in the environment - groundwater, air and consumer products have endangered the health and safety of millions of people around the world. Over the years, several analytical methods have been employed to determine the presence and concentration of organoarsenicals, however, they have some major drawbacks such as difficulty in measuring low concentrations and low selectivity. This research explores the development of a method using capillary electrophoresis (CE) with ultraviolet detection to determine the presence and concentrations of organoarsenicals in environmental water near poultry farms in Kamloops, British Columbia. The effects of type, pH and concentration of background electrolyte on the separation were investigated in order to determine the optimum condition that would enable the detection of low concentrations of the organoarsenicals in environmental water bodies. This optimization allowed for successful and simultaneous baseline separation of roxarsone and nitarsone in water samples from the trough, well and tap water samples at the poultry farm waters. Using the technique of large volume sample stacking in CE, lower limits of detection and quantification were obtained for both roxarsone and nitarsone and further lower limits of detection were observed from preconcentration by applying the solid phase extraction.