Will pink coloration cause interference with analysis of wastewater when testing for Phenol?

Ask the Expert Question:
An industrial permittee has a wastewater that has a slight pink coloration after the pretreatment process. The samples need to be analyzed for Phenol in accordance with 40 CFR 403 and 40 CFR 136. Will the pink coloration cause interference with the analysis?

Experts Response:
The pink color will probably be removed in the distillation, but one way of being sure would be to conduct the test without the addition of the 4-aminoantipyrene color reagent. This should give a result of close to zero if there is no interference. If there is interference, the phenolics result could be approximated by subtracting the value obtained without adding the reagent to the value obtained with adding the reagent.

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