Simultaneous determination of selected phenoxyacid herbicides and chlorophenols in surface and seawater by HPLC coupled to DAD

An analytical method for the simultaneous determination of selected chlorophenols and chlorophenoxyacid herbicides, which are most often present in seawater and surface water, is described. An off-line solid-phase extraction (SPE) over EN cartridges was used for sample preconcentration. Extracts were analyzed by reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with DAD/UV detection. The developed HPLC method makes possible to determine 14 compounds within 22 min in environmental waters with relatively high content of organic matter. Recoveries of chlorophenols and chlorophenoxacid were higher than 60% for phenoxyacids and higher than 70% for chlorophenols with relative standard deviation lower than 9.4%. The linearity ranges after SPE preconcentration are given. The detection limits for analyzed compounds were between 0.1 and 0.25 mug/L. The method was successfully used for determination of selected chlorophenols and phenoxyacids in natural water samples. The results obtained are briefly discussed.