Water treatment by disinfection processes is considered to have been the major public health achievement of the twentieth century. Many drinking water utilities have changed their primary disinfectant from chlorine to alternative disinfectants, which reduces regulated organic by-products such as trihalomethanes levels, but at the same time often increases the level of other potentially toxicologically important compounds. The hazardous inorganic oxyhalide by-products are bromate, chlorite and chlorate. The most important of them is bromate formed when source waters containing bromide are ozonated. Bromate is considered a possible human carcinogen. The following paper is a review of ion chromatographic separations of bromate in water samples and its detection by using various modes of detection. The selected international standards are described and a review of papers concerning ion chromatography determination of bromate in water published in the last 20 years is presented.