Many drinking water utilities are changing their primary disinfectant from chlorine to alternative disinfectants such as ozone, chlorine dioxide and chloramines, which reduce regulated trihalomethanes and some organochlorine compounds levels, but often increase levels of others potentially toxicologically important compounds. The hazardous inorganic oxyhalide by-products are bromate, chlorite and chlorate, some of which have been classified as probable human carcinogens. The most important of these is bromate, formed when source waters containing bromide are ozonated. Chlorite is formed when chlorine dioxide is used, whereas chlorate is formed when chlorine, chlorine dioxide, hypochlorite acid or chloramine is used to disinfect drinking water.
This paper is a review of ion chromatographic separations of these inorganic oxyhalide disinfection byproducts in drinking water and their detection using conductivity, UV/Vis or mass spectrometry detection. The critical comparison of ISO, US EPA and other methods including limits of detection, availability and costs of analyses is given. Furthermore, a review of papers concerning ion chromatography determination of inorganic oxyhalides in drinking water published during the last 20 years is presented.