A field-test kit (SensioScreen® TR500) for the determination of triazine herbicides in water samples has been evaluated. The test is based on an ELISA method performed on a membrane that allows the visual estimation of the presence of triazine herbicides in <10 min. The kit contains all necessary reagents and equipment, and operates on a very simple protocol. The detection level of this semiquantitative kit has been set at 0.5 μg/l (for the sum of all triazines), although concentration levels of 0.1 μg/l for atrazine can be detected. This is the first time that a commercial field-test kit to control water contamination by herbicides performs in compliance with the EU and USA legislations regarding the limit of detection reached. Evaluation and validation studies have been performed using spiked, certified (AquaCheck) and real environmental samples comparing the results with chromatographic methods. In spite of the semiquantitative–qualitative character of the kit, the results demonstrate that the test SensioScreen® TR500 provides a very good estimation of the atrazine concentration in the sample. This test format could be adapted to the detection of other contaminants of environmental relevance.

This work has been supported by CICYT (BIO2000-0351-P4-05) and by INIA (VIN0053-C3).

11 pages, 3 figures, 7 tables.-- Available online Nov 16, 2002.

Peer reviewed