Bromine is a natural component found in waters, most commonly as the bromide ion, Br-. A common procedure for purifying drinking waters is treatment with ozone to kill bacteria. A byproduct of ozonolysis is the conversion of bromide to bromate (BrO3-), a known carcinogen. Therefore, a need exists to measure both bromide and bromate in drinking waters, as opposed to total bromine content.

Our earlier work on bromine speciation focused on separating Br- and BrO3- via anion exchange HPLC and detecting the species with ICP-MS.1 The method proved rugged, but required eight minutes per sample. This work focuses on significantly decreasing the analysis time and also explores the possibility of separating other bromine-containing compounds which were found in several water samples.

Experimental
HPLC Conditions
A PerkinElmer® Series 200 HPLC system, consisting of a quaternary pump, autosampler (with polypropylene vials), vacuum degasser and peltier column oven, was used for all analyses. The separation was done with an anion exchange column (ZirChrom®-SAX ; ZirChrom Separations, Anoka, MN USA).

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