In addition to beneficial health effects, fluoride can also have adverse effects on humans, animals, and plants if the daily intake is strongly elevated. One main source of fluoride uptake is water, and thus several ordinances exist in Germany that declare permissible concentrations of fluoride in, for example, drinking water, mineral water, and landfill seepage water. Controlling the fluoride concentrations in aqueous matrices necessitate valid and fast analytical methods. In this work an alternative method for the determination of fluoride in surface waters based on high-resolution continuum source graphite furnace molecular absorption spectrometry (HR-CS-GFMAS) was applied. Fluoride detection was made possible by the formation of a diatomic molecule, GaF, and detection of characteristic molecular absorption. On HR-CS-GFMAS parameter optimization, the method was adapted to surface water sample analysis. The influence of potential main matrix constituents such as Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+, and Cl- as well as surface water sampling/storage conditions on the molecular absorption signal of GaF was investigated. Method validation demonstrated a low limit of detection (8.1 μg L-1) and a low limit of quantification (26.9 μg L-1), both sufficient for direct river water sample analysis after 0.45-μm filtration. The optimized HR-CS-GFMAS method was applied for the analysis of real water samples from the rivers Rhine and Moselle. For method validation, samples were also analyzed by an ion chromatography (IC) method. IC and HR-CS-GFMAS results both agreed well. In comparison with IC, HR-CS-GFMAS has higher sample throughput, a lower limit of detection and a lower limit of quantification, and higher selectivity, and is a very suitable method for the analysis of dissolved fluoride in river water.
