A new method for the speciation of inorganic lead and trialkyllead compounds involving the selective separation of the analytes in a continuous system and their subsequent introduction into a flame atomic absorption spectrometer was developed. The proposed flow system consists of two units. In the first unit, total inorganic lead at concentrations from 8 to 200 ng ml −1 is continuously precipitated as lead chromate and the filtrate, containing trialkyllead cations, is collected in a vessel, the precipitate then being dissolved in diluted acid and driven to the instrument. In the second unit, trimethyllead (TML +) and triethyllead (TEL +) cations at ng ml −1 levels are complexed with sodium diethyldithiocarbamate and retained on a C 60 pre-conditioned fullerene column; the mixture of both species was resolved by conditioning the sorbent column with n-hexane or isobutyl methyl ketone solvents. Detection limits of 1–2 ng ml −1 can be achieved by using a sample volume of 50 ml. Special attention was given to the reliability and robustness of the global flow injection method in assessing its applicability to both types of organolead compounds and inorganic lead present in different proportions. Trimethyllead provides the poorest results as consequence of its low adsorption constant on C 60; however, the three different types of species (Pb 2+/TML +/TEL +) can be effectively determined in proportions from 1:1:1 to 30:12:1 with relative errors less than 10%.