Ozonization has recently replaced the chlorination of many types of water, since ozone is effective for disinfection. However, since ozone is a very strong oxidant, bromide (Br -) contained in water is also oxidized to form hypobromous acid (HOBr) or hypobromite (OBr -). The latter reacts with excess ozone to form bromate (BrO3 -), which is a disinfection byproduct. 1 The toxicity of BrO3 -has been studied, revealing that BrO3 -is carcinogenic to animals.2 Therefore, the maximum contaminant level of BrO3 -has been set at 10 µg L -1 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. However, there are many problems in the determination of BrO3 -at such low levels. There have been reported several methods for the determination of BrO3 -by ion chromatography (IC). 3,4 Hautman and Bolyard 3 achieved the separation of BrO3 -from chloride (Cl ) and nitrate (NO3 -) by using tetraborate/boric acid as an eluent. Joyce and Dhillon 4 removed a large level of Cl -in the sample by a pretreatment using a silver-form cation-exchange resin. However, these methods were less selective to BrO3 -because conductometric detectors were utilized. On the other hand, the selective determination of BrO3 -with postcolumn derivatization, based on the formation of triiodide (I3 -) by the reaction of BrO3 -and iodide (I -), was proposed, but this method was not sensitive enough to determine BrO3 -in drinking-water samples. 5 Nowack et al. 6 used osmate as a catalyst in the postcolumn derivatization of ClO3 -with I -, followed by the UV detection of I3 -. Although this method is very sensitive, it may not be suitable for the determination of BrO3 -. This is because osmate is poisonous and difficult to handle. Furthermore, they had to use a hydrogen peroxide solution in the whole postcolumn system in order to remove a black precipitate (Os V ). It should be noted that the black precipitate was gradually formed in the reaction coil, which increased the background absorption and decreased the response of the target signal.Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) was utilized for the selective determination of BrO3 -at ppb levels. 7 This method utilized BrO3 -as an oxidant, viz., it oxidized Br -to bromine (Br2), and the formed Br2 then reacted with styrene to produce a hydroxylbromostyrene derivative to be analyzed by GC/MS. However, this method is too complicated and troublesome to determine BrO3 -.Sensitive and selective detection procedures of BrO3 -were proposed based on the conversion of the oxidant to Br3 -by a postcolumn reaction with Br -under acidic conditions. 8,9 These methods achieved the sensitive and selective determination of BrO3 -in drinking water. They had to use a rather complicated pumping system, viz., three pumps for providing the eluent for IC, sodium bromide (NaBr) as the postcolumn reagent, and sulfuric acid (H2SO4). H2SO4 was used to convert NaBr into hydrobromic acid (HBr) using a suppressor, followed by a postcolumn reaction.We previously reported on the determination of iodate (IO3 -) and nitrite (NO2 -) as I3 -via a po...