Environmental specimen bank of the federal republic of Germany — Significance of surfactants

Abstract

Environmental contaminants in water, soil, and air, as well as changes in their concentration with respect to space and time may be quite effectively detected by the analysis of appropriate indicators (biomatrices from different levels of the food chain, sediments, sludges, dusts) which accumulate these chemicals by several orders of magnitude. However, regular monitoring of the environment should not be restricted to presently known substances. The suitable storage of representative indicator specimens allows also the retrospective analysis of chemicals which are not detectable at present or which have not been regarded as environmental pollutants so far. Therefore, the German Environmental Specimen Bank (ESB) of the Federal Government was established in 1985 with the purpose of storing representative samples from the terrestrial and aquatic environment as well as from human beings for future decades without any change in chemical composition. In spite of its relatively limited time of operation, the ESB has already obtained a variety of promising results which support not only the success of legislative regulations (introduction of unleaded fuels, ban of pentachlorophenol), but demonstrate also the decrease of pollutants in rivers due to reduced industrial or municipal discharges. Moreover, the effectivity of new technologies with respect to environmental protection may be traced back by a specific and retrospective characterization of suitable indicator samples. In addition to its routine program, the Institute of Applied Physical Chemistry of the Research Centre Jülich (KFA) is performing basic studies on the speciation of selected elements such as arsenic, mercury, and tin, and the determination of new compounds. In this respect, surfactants play an important role because they can influence the immobilization or remobilization of pollutants in soils or sediments. The mobility of other chemicals in such matrices can be estimated, if surfactant concentrations are known. With that, a prediction of possible contaminations of ground or surface water is possible. Selected examples will be discussed in detail.