Californian 'Public Health Goal' of 4ppt arsenic in drinking waters is welcomed by manufacturer of spectrometry system with claimed detection limit of just 2ppt
PS Analytical (PSA) is offering help to industry and regulators in California, following release of a draft Public Health Goal (PHG) for arsenic in drinking water, by the California Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA).
The draft PHG proposed 4 parts per trillion (ppt) as a level of arsenic in drinking water that would not be expected to pose a human health risk.
If this is accepted, all drinking water providers and regulators in California will have 4ppt as their long-term objective for the reduction of arsenic in drinking water.
"We are very pleased about this proposed arsenic PHG for California, particularly because 4ppt is well within the compass of our Millennium Excalibur system, which combines a vapour generation (VG) stage with atomic fluorescence spectrometry (AFS)," said PSA president Peter Stockwell.
He warned that other techniques, even those that are more expensive, such as inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), will have difficulties in reaching the 4ppt level.
The company says the Millennium Excalibur can accurately and reliably determine arsenic in drinking water down to 2ppt.
Such accurate, reliable measurements of arsenic in drinking water require attention to detailed chemistry.
If drinking water providers and regulators want to determine the species of arsenic that may be the source of contamination, PSA says it can help them by linking its Millennium Excalibur system seamlessly with a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system.
