Trace amounts of copper and iron exist widely in river, tap, pond, well, and underground water. These metals are essential trace elements for biological systems. Numerous dissolving chemical forms, such as aqua ions, complexes and colloids, are observed in natural water. In general, the toxicity of dissolved copper(II) is considered to be much less than that of mercury, but greater than that of cadmium, silver, lead, and zinc. 1 However, it has been reported that chelating agents, such as nitrilotriacetic acid and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, decreased the toxicity of copper.2 The concentration levels of these metals existing in natural water are trace and/or ultratrace. Therefore, a highly sensitive analytical method for the determination of copper and iron is required to investigate water pollution.Kinetic-catalytic methods based on catalyzed reactions have been developed for the determination of manganese, chromium, cobalt, and vanadium ions at trace and ultratrace levels. [3][4][5][6] Kawashima et al. have determined ppb levels of iron in tap and hot-spring water samples. 7 Recently, the present authors also reported a catalytic method for the determination of copper using a flow-injection system. 8 On the other hand, adsorptive cathodic stripping voltammetry (ACSV) was proposed to measure copper in seawater at trace levels. 9 However, one of the major problems in ACSV is the adsorption of organic compounds on the electrode. 10 The kinetic-catalytic methods require a controlled reaction temperature, time, and constant mixing of the reagents. Thus, flow injection analysis (FIA), which has advantages of rapidity and easy assembly, is efficient to control serious experimental conditions. However, it is difficult to successively determine several analytes by an FIA system equipped with a conventional flow cell. Recently, Sakai and his co-workers designed twochannel double and serial flow cells 11 and a twin flow cell 12 for the simultaneous determination of copper and iron with 2-(5-However, these methods using chromogenic reagents were not sufficient for the determination of sub-ppb levels of copper and iron. Also, it is difficult to analyze the complexation reactions of ppb levels of copper and iron with ligands, such as humic and fulvic acids. During the recent decade, some researchers have reported on catalytic methods for binary metal mixtures, such as silver(I)-mercury(II), 13 chromium(VI)-tungsten(VI), 14 and iron(II)-antimonony(III). 15 However, there are few reports on kineticcatalytic methods for the determination of two catalysts using a single indicator reaction.In the presence of hydrogen peroxide, p-anisidine reacted with N,N-dimethylaniline (DMA) to form a dye (λmax = 740 nm). Although the oxidative coupling reaction was slow, the reaction rate was accelerated in the presence of copper(II) 16 or iron(III).
17Since the absorbance of the dye formed at a fixed time was proportional to these metal concentrations, it was possible to determine copper(II) and iron(III). In a previous paper, 18 this k...