A sensitive and selective extractive preconcentration procedure for the determination of traces of lead in water samples has been developed. An alumina-sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) coated modified with 4-(4-methoxybenzylidenimine) thiophenole (MBITP) was used for preconcentration and determination of Pb(II) by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. Lead was adsorbed quantitatively on modified column due to its complexation with MBITP and quantitatively eluted using 5 mL 1 mol L-1 nitric acid in acetone. The effects of parameters such as pH, amount of solid phase, amount of MBITP, flow rate, type and concentration of eluting agent were examined. The effect of interfering ions on the determination of Pb(11) was also investigated. The response of proposed method is linear in the concentration range 0.05-1.2 mu g mL(-1) of Pb(II). The limit of detections (3S.D.(b)/m, n = 4) and relative standard deviations (n = 11) are 1.6 ng mL(-1) and 0.9%, respectively. The presented procedure was successfully applied for determination of lead content in real samples such as river, spring, waste and drinking water. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.