Spectrophotometric determination of lead in vegetables with dibromo-p-methyl-carboxysulfonazo

A new highly sensitive and selective chromogenic reagent dibromo-p-methyl-carboxysulfonazo (DBMCSA) was synthesized and studied for the spectrophotometric determination of lead in detail. In 0.25 M phosphoric acid medium, which greatly increases the selectivity, lead reacts with DBMCSA to form a 1:2 blue complex, having a sensitive absorption peak at 648 nm. Under the optimal conditions, Beerʹs law is obeyed over the range from 0 to 0.8 μg ml−1 Pb(II) and the apparent molar absorptivity is 1.04×105 l mol−1 cm−1. The detection limit and the variation coefficient were found to be 2.14 ng ml−1 and 1.0%, respectively. It is found that, except for Ca(II) and Ba(II), all foreign ions studied do not interfere with determination. The interference caused by Ca(II) and Ba(II) can be easily eliminated by prior extraction with potassium iodide-methylisobutylketone. The method has been applied to the determination of lead in vegetables with satisfactory results.