Simultaneous determination of binary mixtures of sulfonylurea herbicides in water by first-derivative photochemically induced spectrofluorimetry.

First-derivative photochemically induced spectrofluorimetry (PIF-1D) is applied to the simultaneous determination of binary mixtures of 4 sulfonylurea herbicides in aqueous micellar samples. Synthetic binary mixtures of sulfometuronmethyl with chlorsulfuron, metsulfuron-methyl, and 3-rimsulfuron, respectively, are well resolved by using the zero-crossing point procedure. PIF-1D allows the determination of binary mixtures of these herbicides with linear dynamic ranges over about 2 orders of magnitude, limits of detection between 0.5 and 52 ng/mL, and relative standard deviations within 0.3-2.9%. Application to the determination of binary mixtures of these herbicides in spiked tap water samples yielded satisfactory recoveries (90-117%).