Preliminary Findings on the Antimony Levels of Quiroga River Water in the Vicinity of a Long‐Abandoned Stibnite Mine

Abstract

A UV-Vis spectrophotometric method was developed as a preliminary approach to the determination of antimony in water samples from a river that flows very close to an abandoned mining site. The analyte is complexed with ammonium pyrrolidinedithiocarbamate and absorbance of the complex is measured at 291.06 nm. The standard additions method is mandatory in view of the matrix effect observed, and the response is linear at least up to 9.3 microg/mL of antimony. The sensitivity of the method is 2.609 x 10(-2) mL/microg, whereas the limits of detection and quantification are, respectively, 0.2 and 0.6 microg/mL. The repeatability, expressed as mean relative standard deviation of the measurements within the calibration range, is 2.0%, whereas the repeatability of the entire procedure is 0.3%. The mean analytical recovery within the calibration range was 102.6%. The method was successfully applied to river water samples.