A new and very simple kinetic-spectrophotometric method was developed for the simultaneous determination of binary mixtures of iodate and bromate in water samples, without prior separation steps. The method is based on the mean centering of ratio kinetic profiles, allows rapid and accurate determination of bromate and iodate. The analytical characteristics of the method such as detection limit, accuracy, precision, relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) and relative standard error (R.S.E.) for the simultaneous determination of binary mixtures of iodate and bromate were calculated. The results show that the method was capable of simultaneous determination of 0.05-1.50 mu g mL(-1) each of iodate and bromate. The results allow simultaneous determination with the ratio 30:1-1:30 for iodate-bromate. The proposed method was successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of iodate and bromate in several water samples. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.