Hydrogen peroxide method intercomparision study in seawater

The POHPAA method, which cannot distinguish organic peroxides from H2O2, was also compared to the HPLC method of Lee et al. [Lee, M., Heikes, B.G., Jacob, D.J., Sachse, G., Anderson, B., 1997. Hydrogen peroxide, organic hydroperoxide, and formaldehyde as primary pollutants from biomass burning. Journal of Geophysical Research, [Atmospheres], 102 (D1), 1301-1309.]. The latter method separates organic peroxides from H2O2 and then measures the concentration of each species. These two methods produced results that are not significantly different from each other, demonstrating that hydrogen peroxide is the only peroxide detected in seawater. It can be inferred from these studies that previous H2O2 measurements made with non-selective techniques measure H2O2 in seawater, and that organic peroxides comprise an insignificant fraction of the total peroxide signal. This study also validates the use of the HPLC method for seawater analyses, as the method was originally developed for atmospheric gas-phase studies.