Simultaneous gas chromatographic determination of dibutyltin and tributyltin compounds in biological and sediment samples.

A method is described for the simultaneous determination of nanogram amounts of dibutyltin and tributyltin compounds in biological and sediment samples. These compounds are converted to the corresponding chlorides with HCl, extracted with ethyl acetate-hexane (3 + 2) for biological samples and with hexane for sediment samples, and hydrogenated with sodium borohydride. The corresponding hydrides, Bu2SnH2 and Bu3SnH, are detected by electron-capture gas chromatography after cleanup by silica gel column chromatography. Detection limits are 1.0-2.0 and 0.5-1.0 ng/g, respectively, for biological and sediment samples.