Questions concerning environmental mobility of arsenic: needs for a chemical data base and means for speciation of trace organoarsenicals

Biomethylation of metals, including arsenic, apparently occurs as a global process. Health control strategies therefore depend on accurate analysis of arsenic's environmental mobility. Determining to what extent biotransformations occur and how resultant organometal(loids) are sequestered in food chains requires sophistication beyond present-day total element determinations. Rather, active molecular forms of arsenic must be speciated for each environmental compartment, and it is necessary to quantify the dynamics of arsenic's mobility. Thus, new chemical facts are needed yielding rates of methylation or demethylation of arsenic; partition coefficients of organoarsenicals between air, water, and organic phases; and arsenic redox chemistry in polar media. NBS research in this context is reviewed with examples of recent results emphasizing speciation methodology. Topic areas discussed are: the nature of aquated methylarsenic species (NMR and laser-Raman spectroscopy); transport of methylarsenicals from aqueous media (gas chromatography-graphic furnace AA detection applied to metabolic Me3As formation); and speciation of involatile organoarsenicals in aqueous media (demonstration of HPLC utilizing element-specific AA detection and appraisal of electrochemical detectors).