C18 Extraction of Atrazine from Small Water Sample Volumes

A method was developed to detect atrazine at a 0.05 ppb detection limit with a 10 ml_ sample volume. The herbicide Is extracted from 10 mL water with C18 solid-phase extraction and eluted into a reduction vessel with ethyl acetate. The sample is then evaporated to dryness under a stream of nitrogen and redlssolved for Injection Into a gas chromatograph/ mass spectrometer. Terbuthylazlne is used as Internal standard to compensate for extraction process variables. Standard curves have consistently shown correlation coefficients of 0.99 or better. Duplicate samples show a variance of 5% or less. Twelve samples can be extracted In about 1.5 h with