Abstract

A gas chromatography-mass spectrometric (GC-MS) assay method was developed for the rapid and sensitive determination of volatile- and semivolatile organic compounds in water. Two hundreds mL of water sample was extracted in a 250 mL separatory funnel with 1 ml of pentane at pH 6.5. Fluorobenzene and 1,2-dichlorobenzene-d4 as internal standards were added to water sample and the solution was mechanically shaken for 5 min and analyzed by GC-MS (selected ion monitoring) without more any concentration or purification steps. The peaks had good chromatographic properties and the extraction of these compounds from water also gave relatively high recoveries with small variations. The range of detection limits of the assay was 0.5-10 ng/L. Turnaround time for up to about 40 samples was one day. This method is simple, convenient, and can be learned easily by relatively inexperienced personnel. This method was used to analyze 15 volatile- and semivolatile organic compounds in water of a Lake, and raw and treated water from three Water Treatment Plants in Korea. As the analytical results, benzene, toluene, xylene, isopropylbenzene, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene, 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, naphthalene and 2,4,6-trichlorophenol were detected at concentrations of up to 0.4, 1.9, 1.3, 0.2, 1.8, 13.0, 1.7 and 1.1 ㎍/L, respectively. But chlorobenzene, trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, ethylbenzene, n-butylbenzene and dibromochloropropane levels during that period were not significant. The removal effect of the compounds in three Water Treatment Plants was calculated. The compounds studied were generally removed during conventional water treatment, especially during the active carbon filtration.