Spectrophotometric flow injection determination of formetanate and m-aminophenol in water after reaction with p-aminophenol

Abstract An automated procedure has been developed for the determination of formetanate and its metabolite m -aminophenol (MAP) in water samples. MAP can be selectively determined in the presence of formetanate by direct on-line reaction with p -aminophenol and spectrophotometric measurement of the absorbance at 576 nm in the presence of KIO 4 , as oxidizing agent. The method has a limit of detection of 5 × 10 −7 M , it provides a recovery percentage from 95 to 104% and permits one to carry out 120 measurements/hr. The spectrophotometric determination of formetanate must be carried out after a previous hydrolysis to MAP. To determine formetanate in the presence of MAP, two steps are necessa…