Determination of bromate in drinking water by ultraperformance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

Bromate is a byproduct formed as a result of disinfection of bromide-containing source water with ozone or hypochlorite. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has recognized bromate as a possible human carcinogen, thus it is essential to determine in drinking water. Present work highlights a development of sensitive and fast analytical method for bromate determination in drinking water by using ultraperformance liquid chromatographytandem mass spectrometry. The quality parameters of the developed method were established, obtaining very low limit of detection (0.01 ng/mL), repeatability and reproducibility have been found to be less than 3% in terms of relative standard deviation when analyzing a bromate standard at 0.05 mu g/mL with 0.4 min analysis time. Developed method was applied for the analysis of metropolitan and bottled water from Saudi Arabia; 22 samples have been analyzed. Bromate was detected in the metropolitan water samples (from desalinization source) at concentrations ranging between 3.43 and 75.04 ng/mL and in the bottled water samples at concentrations ranging between 2.07 and 21.90 ng/mL. Moreover, in comparison to established analytical methods such as liquid chromatographytandem mass spectrometry, the proposed method was found to be very sensitive, selective and rapid for the routine analysis of bromate at low level in drinking water.