CO2 laser ablation of the frozen water matrix, followed by resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization technique coupled with reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometry, has been used for analysis of water polluted with phenol molecules. The linear dependence of the ion signal on the phenol concentration ranged from 0.1 fig L-1 to 10 mg L-1 under identical experimental conditions. A detection limit of 0.1 fig L-1 was achieved for phenol. It was shown that the overall sensitivity of 1 ng L-1 (1 ppt) can be attained with the present experimental setup. The velocity distribution of the ablated phenol species was approximated by a Maxwell-like function at a temperature

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