Simultaneous determination of atrazine and metabolites (DIA and DEA) in natural water by multivariate electronic spectroscopy

A simple and rapid analytical method involving solid-phase extraction (SPE) and multivariate electronic spectroscopy for the determination of atrazine (ATZ) and its main metabolites desethylatrazine (DEA) and deisopropylatrazine (DIA) in aqueous solution was proposed. The predictive capability of the multivariate method developed by partial least squares regression was satisfactory, allowing mean errors between 0.33 and 10% in the simultaneous determination of ATZ, DIA and DEA in aqueous solution. The SPE procedure was optimized by factorial design, using ATZ as a model substrate. Under optimized experimental conditions, the recoveries of ATZ from aqueous standard solutions ranged from 83 to 116%. The developed method was applied in the analysis of spiked natural waters (river and spring) with recoveries in the range of 73-115% for ATZ in spring water. In the analysis of these complex samples, an important matrix effect was observed probably because of significant effects in both the extraction and quantification processes. Although the multivariate spectroscopy in the analysis of natural waters was largely dependent on the application of preliminary cleanup techniques guided to the removal of organic matter, the SPE-UV-PLS method was simple, fast and operated with low running costs.