US Drinking Water Legislation

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), of 1996, gave the USEPA power to set and regulate national standards for the quality of supplied drinking water and drinking water sources. This is regulated by EPA’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water (OGWDW) under regulation 40 CFR 141. Supplied waters must comply with the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) specified in the National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (NPDWR). Further contaminants are given guide values in the National Secondary Drinking Water Regulations (NSDWR) (40 CFR 143).

The approved methods for this include ICP-MS method 200.8 in combination with preparation method 200.2, GF-AAS method 200.9, which is particularly useful for arsenic analysis when ICP is used for other elements, and ICP method 200.7, which may be used for a number of elements, but has been withdrawn from approval for arsenic.

See http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ for further information on SDWA.

Thermo Fisher Scientific’s XSeriesII ICP-MS is ideal for drinking water analysis with method 200.8 because it’s unique Xt interface technology produces inherently low and stable polyatomic interference contributions, meaning that collision/reaction cell technology is not necessary for regulated drinking water analysis. See our method 200.8 application note for further details. To make this even easier, the method development has been done for you with our unique 200.8 Productivity Pack which provides everything you need to get the system running productively as soon as possible after installation.

Thermo Fisher Scientific’s M Series and S Series AAs are also available for GF-AAS (method 200.9) analysis of arsenic, if you prefer to continue to use ICP (method 200.7).