EVALUATION OF THE PERFORMANCE OF ANALYTICAL PROCEDURES FOR THE TRACE-LEVEL DETERMINATION OF AMINOTRIAZOLE IN DRINKING WATERS

Aminotriazole is a widely used pesticide which is very difficult to analyze at the regulatory level of 0.1 mu g/l level in drinking water, because of its high water solubility which makes it difficult to extract from aqueous media. The extraction procedures that can be performed, i.e., evaporation and solid-phase extraction using ion-exchanger or ion-pair sorbents are evaluated, Their off-line analysis by HPLC in the reversed-phase or in the ion-exchange mode, coupled with electrochemical detection or UV after derivatization, is discussed. It is shown that no routine method allows quantification at the 0.1 mu g/l level. Moreover, there is a strong interdependence between the preconcentration, the chromatographic separation, and the detection steps of the total analytical procedure, For example, it is shown to be impossible to couple ion-exchange preconcentration or evaporation to the best performing analysis, which is obtained by ion-exchange chromatography with electrochemical detection.