Spectrophotometric determination of iron(III) dimethyldithiocarbamate (ferbam)

A spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of ferbam (iron(III) dimethyldithiocarbamate) by converting it into an iron-phenanthroline complex, which was then absorbed on microcystalline naphthalene in the presence of tetraphenylborate, and the absorbance was measured at 515 nm against a reagent blank. The molar absorptivity of the complex was 1.2 x 10(4) 1 mol(-1) cm(-1). Ten replicate analyses of a sample solution containing 150 mu g of ferbam gave a relative standard deviation of 0.84. Beer's law was obeyed over the concentration range 22.4-372.9 mu g of ferbam. The effects of various factors such as reagent concentration and naphthalene, shaking time and diverse ions were studied in detail. The method is sensitive and selective and can be applied to the direct determination of ferbam in commercial samples and in mixtures containing various other dithiocarbamates (e.g. ziram, zineb and maneb) in foodstuffs.