It is well-known that low molecular-weight aldehydes, such as formaldehyde, are environmentally hazardous substances. Formaldehyde enters the environment from natural sources and from direct human sources such as fuel combustion, industrial on-site uses and off gassing from building materials and consumer products. Formaldehyde enters drinking water as a result of human activities; the major sources are the discharge of industrial wastes and oxidative water treatment processes, such as ozonation and chlorination. 1,2 This compounds uniquely important because of its widespread use and toxicity and it is recognized as one of most important pollutants. 3 Also, it has known irritant properties such as eye irritation, respiration irritation and pulmonary edema. 4 Several flow injection spectrophotometric methods have been reported for the determination of formaldehyde 5-11 using different chemical agents. The disadvantages of these methods are high limits of determination and short linear dynamic ranges 6-10 (> 50 ng ml -1 ), low color stability, 7,8 and they suffer interference from many substances.6-9 All of the above methods are simple but are not sensitive enough and are subject to interferences from other organic compounds. Recently, Zhang et al. 11 have reported a flow injection spectrophotometric method for determination of formaldehyde, but the limit of detection is higher (18 ng ml -1 ) than the proposed method and the method has short dynamic range. The other sensitive flow injection method is based on chemiluminescence 12 and spectrofluorometric 13 determination of formaldehyde. The chemiluminescence method is highly sensitive, but suffers many interfering substances, whereas the spectrofluorometric method has short linear dynamic range (1 -56 µg ml -1 ) for the determination of formaldehyde.The aim of this paper was the development of a selective and safe method for the determination of formaldehyde at trace levels. The method was based on the catalytic effect of formaldehyde on the oxidation of sulfonazo III by bromate in acidic media, and analysis by flow injection and spectrophotometric detection at 566 nm. The method allows rapid determination of formaldehyde at low operating costs and shows simplicity, adequate selectivity, and low limit of detection with a very good precision.
Experimental
Reagents and chemicalsAll the dilutions of standard solutions and reagent solutions were prepared using redistilled water and stored in glass bottles with screw-cap.A 2.64-ml volume of formaldehyde (35%, Sigma) was dissolved into water in a 1000-ml volumetric flask to prepare 1.0 mg ml -1 formaldehyde solution. The solution was standardized by sulfite using a titrimetry method. 14 Working solution was prepared daily by appropriate dilution of the stock solution with water. A 1.45 × 10 -4 sulfonazo III solution was prepared by dissolving 0.010 g of the reagent (Merck) in water in a 100-ml volumetric flask. A 1.0 M bromate solution was prepared by dissolving 15.090 g NaBrO3 (Fluka) in 100 ml water in a 100-ml volum...