Investigation of the Development of a Method for Determining Haloacetic Acids in Drinking Water Using Combined Derivatization and Static Headspace Analysis with GC/MS

Haloacetic acids (HAA) are Disinfection By-products (DBP) formed when water with natural organic matter is disinfected with chlorine. HAA are regulated in Canadian drinking water at a maximum acceptable concentration (MAC) for total HAA in drinking water of 0.08 mg/L (80 µg/L). They are considered to have potential health impacts so therefore monitoring them in drinking water is required. Standard methods for determination of HAA are time consuming and involve multiple steps and reagents. Many recent literature studies have focussed on development of alternative methods using less solvent and fewer steps. Some examples are Carador et al that use micro-extraction with pentanes and Sarrion et al that uses solid phase micro extraction (SPME). Both methods use Static Headspace GC-MS as their choice of instrument and detector. The goal of the research is to investigate development of a method to determine Dichloroacetic Acid as a model HAA by combining in-situ derivatization in water with Static Headspace (SH) GC-MS. The initial approach has been to build on the work of Sarrion. It is the goal to remove these extraction processes and to see if the aqueous derivatization and SH GC-MS will allow analysis of HAA in drinking water. Results to date will be presented and discussed