Applicability of phenylpiperazine dithiocarbamate in the determination of As(III) in natural water and biological samples by differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry

A simple and rapid differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetric method was developed for the determination of As(III) in natural water and biological samples. As(III) was accumulated onto hanging mercury drop electrode using phenylpiperazine dithiocarbamate as selective complexing agent. The effects of various parameters, such as reagent concentration, effect of the pH of the medium, accumulation potential, accumulation time and the scan rate were investigated. Under the optimum conditions, a linear calibration graph was obtained in the concentration range of 0.05 to 60 μg mL-1 with a correlation coefficient of 0.9998 and detection limit of 0.024 μg mL-1. The effects of interference ions were studied and it was found that the method was free from the interferences of some common cations. The proposed method was applied for the determination of As(III) in natural water and biological samples and the results according to the t-test and f-test for a 95% confidence level with a relative standard deviation lower than 2.7% showed good agreement with the reported methods.