Marine organisms extraction methods

Gron [23] has reviewed methods for the determination of halogenated organic compounds (adsorbable, volatile and extractable), with particular reference to their applicability to wastewaters and marine samples (marine sediments and marine organisms). Typical analytical results for marine... 

After several decades of research, fundamental aspects of the chemical composition and structure of marine organic matter remain elusive. Advances in the chemical characterization of marine organic matter are, in large part, dependent on the development of quantitative methods for its concentration and isolation from seawater. Each of the major methods currently used for the isolation of marine DOM recovers around one-third of the DOM in seawater (solid-phase extractions, using XAD resins or C18 adsorbents, and ultrafiltration). A coupled reverse osmosis-electrodi-alysis method has recently been used to recover an average of 75% 12% of marine DOM from 16 seawater samples however, the method has emerged too recently to have been well tested at this time. 

Although this chapter focuses on applications with effluent wastewaters, all types of aquatic environmental media (freshwater, brackish, marine) can be appraised with the pT-scale procedure. Testing of liquid samples is virtually unlimited and can include untreated and treated wastewater, surface water, ground water, porewater, elutriates and organic extracts of sediments. Applications could also be extended to assess toxicity of particle-bound substances in suspended matter and sediments. In this case, sample dilutions can be made with reference sediment material (Hoss and Krebs, 2003). The pT-method can also capture the effects of both soluble and particulate toxicity in a sample, provided that appropriate bioassays are employed. 

The general objective, principle, and scope of application of the pT-method are succinctly described in Section 1 and also reported elsewhere in this book (see Chapter 3 of this volume, Section 5.1), where readers will appreciate that this hazard assessment scheme is adaptable to both liquid and solid media. Briefly recalled here in the context of solid-media samples such as dredged material, the pT-value, which relates to a single bioassay, and the pT-index, derived from the most sensitive organism in a test battery, permit a numerical classification of environmental samples on the basis of ecotoxicological principles. Sediment from any aquatic ecosystem (freshwater, brackish, marine) and from any of its phases (whole sediment, porewaters, elutriates or organic extracts) can be appraised provided that the proper standardized toxicity tests are available. There are whole-sediment test protocols standardized for many agencies (e.g., Environment Canada, ASTM). 

Henrikson, A.A. and Pawlik, J.R., A new antifouling assay method results from field experiments using extracts of four marine organisms, J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol., 194, 157, 1995. 

Albert, J., Rubio, R., Rauret, G. Extraction method for arsenic speciation in marine organisms. Fresenius J. Anal. Chem. 351, 420-425 (1995)... 

One promising method of extracting elements from sea water uses marine organisms. Many marine animals concentrate certain elements in their bodies at levels many times higher than the levels in sea water. Vanadium, for example, is taken up by the mucus of certain tunicates and can be concentrated in these animals to more than 280,000 times its concentration in sea water. Other marine organisms can concentrate copper and zinc by a factor of about 1 million. If these animals could be cultivated in large quantities without endangering the ocean ecosystem, they could become a valuable source of trace metals. 

The methods most commonly employed for the analysis of petroleum hydrocarbons in marine organisms (2-5) involve extraction with or without saponification, fractionation by column chromatography on silica gel... 

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