Validation of the use of ion chromatography to assess compliance with water quality regulations by studying water quality in the Lacantún River in southwest Mexico

ABSTRACT

Preserving the good ‘health’ of an aquatic ecosystem requires the water quality to be analysed. Water analyses are necessary to establish the pollution baseline and then to continually monitor pollutant concentrations. Classical water analysis methods are time-consuming, suffer from interferences, and are costly. Therefore, new analytical techniques that are faster, more accurate, and cheaper than classical techniques should clearly be incorporated into long-term studies as they become available. To allow this, a new technique must be validated against ‘official methods’ or a previously validated technique. One of the most important validation parameter is the comparability of the data produced using the new and established techniques. Both techniques must give equivalent but not necessarily identical results. In the study presented here we validated an ion chromatography method against a previously validated flow injection analysis method paying particular attention to the comparability of the data produced.

KEYWORDS:

• Ion chromatography
• flow injection analysis
• water quality
• validation
• comparability

Acknowledgments

The authors received financial support through the “Conservación, manejo y restauración de los ecosistemas acuáticos del río Lacantún” project provided by Natura y Ecosistemas Mexicanos, A.C., and from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature alliance and the Carlos Slim Foundation. The authors thank personnel at the “Estación Chajul” for providing invaluable help, lodgings, transportation, and meals during frequent visits to the Lancandon jungle. The authors thank Metrohm México for providing the instruments used in the study.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have, or could appear to have, influenced the work described in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature alliance with Carlos Slim Foundation; Natura y Ecosistemas Mexicanos, A.C.