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 chromatography-tandem 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 μg/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 chromatography-tandem 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.