Mercury Analysis Archive

Aquagro is a company specialized in exporting fresh swordfish to Europe from the South Pacific. Its primary goal is to deliver a superior service that provides its clients with complete comfort regarding the quality and safety of their seafood products. At Aquagro, 100% of the fish is inspected for mercury levels in order to meet all European consumer-safety regulations. Aquagro is capable of sampling about 6,500 samples every month. Aquagro’s testing lab was experiencing difficulties with handling large number of samples and rush deliveries that needed to be processed every day to ensure quality and compliance with European legal requirements and regulations. After evaluating many instruments, the Milestone DMA-80 evo direct mercury analyzer was the clear choice to meet Aquagro’s significant throughput needs.

YORK Analytical Laboratories, has been in business for 29 years providing their customers in CT, NY and NJ with full service environmental testing. Currently the lab is expanding their office locations and employs over 50 scientists off all levels and that enable the company to provide quick turnaround, precise results and excellent customer service. At YORK, almost every project had unique requirements and the CVAA method for mercury analysis posed many challenges. It was hard to comply with rush deliveries. In addition, the chemist’s exposure to acid vapors for mercury analysis increased the overall health risks. “At York, we completely changed our environmental mercury testing capabilities with the Milestone DMA-80 direct mercury analyzer. By switching from Cold Vapor AA, we have eliminated the use of reagents and drastically cut waste disposal costs.”

ACZ Laboratories has increased their overall productivity and marketability of mercury in solids analysis by lowering the detection limit and eliminating the sample prep step. DMA-80 has greatly increased their efficiency and productivity in the analysis of mercury in solids, lowered costs through elimination of reagents, and greatly reduced the generation of hazardous waste. It has significantly lowered their method detection limits and helped ACZ to secure new testing contracts. Before implementing the DMA-80, their former method for analyzing mercury in solid matrices was EPA 7471A with CVAA.

As the leading supplier of cement and related products in Southern Africa, PPC Ltd has nine manufacturing facilities and three milling depots in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Rwanda that can produce around eight million tons of cement products each year. PPC Cement Group Laboratory Services is the reference laboratory for all the PPC factories. To obtain low detection levels of Hg in samples, the ability to accurately quantify at lower concentration levels is a big advantage when making environmental decisions. The laboratory is responsible for R&D projects as well as customer support and problems, exploration analysis, environmental studies and solves any problems the factories may have.

The Palaeoworks Lab, based at the Australian National University, conducts research on the historical and current uses of mercury in Australia. The Palaeoworks Lab requires high precision analyses of mercury for their research. Previously the Lab was analysing mercury using an ICP-MS, which was not performing well with analyses of low mercury concentrations. The DMA-80 has been defined as an ideal equipment for teaching purposes as, it is cost effective to run, with an intuitive user interface that enables students to quickly understand the logic behind the equipment and to develop confidence in working with the instrument.

Abua Ikem, Ph.D. is a Professor of Analytical Chemistry and the Head of the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at Lincoln University. Dr. Ikem’s research laboratory performs trace metals analysis on a wide range of environmental and food samples. Mercury determination can be a challenging and time-consuming task when working with ICP-based techniques and CVAA. Direct mercury determination addresses the analysis needs for a wide array of matrices in a fast and accurate way and provides a great deal of flexibility, ideal for an academic lab.

East Kentucky Power Cooperative provides wholesale electricity to 1 million Kentucky residents. Milestone’s DMA-80 evo enables EKPC to meet all state and federal testing standards for mercury determination of coal samples within the required timelines. When compared to their prior method, the DMA-80 evo’s unique design has dramatically reduced the time spent on sample analysis and system maintenance.

The Department of Environmental Science at University of Helsinki holds a high standard for environmental education and research. The purpose of mercury analysis is mainly research, but it also has been used in some courses for teaching students.The DMA-80 Direct Mercury Analyzer from Milestone was purchased about 10 years ago and it has made Hg analysis faster, easier, with no use of chemicals or hazardous wastes.