Incident Monitoring of Glyphosate and Aminomethylphosphonic Acid in Natural Waters – Experimental Set-up and Validation

Abstract

A measuring system based on sequential injection analysis (SIA) for the detection of the herbicide glyphosate and its main metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) in natural waters is presented. The system is automated to enable an unattended monitoring of the analytes. Due to its compact manifold it can easily be integrated into existing observing systems or could be used on board of research vessels. Here we show the experimental setup and the results of the system’s performance during experimental periods of 20 hours in the laboratory as well as in an observing station situated at the Elbe river in Hamburg, Germany. An incident with elevated glyphosate and AMPA concentrations was simulated by injecting spiked river water samples. The results show a good stability of the system over the experimental period.