Feasibility study of a reference material for water chemistry: Long term stability of triazine and phenylurea residues stored in vials or on polymeric sorbents

Matrix Reference Materials (MRM) are essential tools for the validation of analytical protocols. Nowadays, there are no such materials for the determination of herbicides in water. So, a feasibility study of a MRM for the analysis of triazines and phenylureas in water was carried out. Different kinds of candidates MRM were prepared: solutions of pesticides diluted in acetonitrile and stored in sealed vials or stored at the dry state after the evaporation of the solvent to dryness, pesticides stored on two different types of polymeric solid-phase extraction (SPE) sorbents after the percolation of drinking or river waters spiked with pesticides. The stability of these candidates MRM stored at various temperatures (room temperature, 0.5 °C or −18 °C) was studied over a period of approximately 1 year. Two different levels of concentration were studied for each kind of material. During the storage, some samples of each different MRM candidate were monthly analyzed by liquid chromatography. Results showed that, among the candidate materials, some of them presented satisfactory enough stability to consider a further certification. They were either pesticides in solution in sealed vials or pesticides stored on cartridges after the percolation of spiked water samples. However, it was shown that these different MRM candidates had to be stored at a temperature lower than 0.5 °C.