Chemical Analysis for Assessment and Evaluation of Environmental Pollutants: Fact or Artifact

Abstract

Due to the presence of both known and unknown sites and sources of environmental pollutants in many industrialized regions, there exists the possibility for releases of hazardous anthropogenic organics into the environment that present a potential hazard to human health. Many of these releases remain undetected until after the fact; i.e., endpoints of exposure surface in the indigenous population, chemical monitoring/biological monitoring or survey programs show a contamination or threat of release, or the pollutants affect the flora of fauna at the site of the contamination or release. An approach to early detection of environmental pollutants or release of these pollutants is the use of in situ monitoring methodologies via sentinel organisms. These situations require an approach by the environmental analytical chemist that provides data appropriate to assess and evaluate the situation so that effective measures can be instituted. The acquisition of such data requires analyses at trace levels, i.e., ppb or lower, thereby increasing the probability of interferences from artifacts of isolation or inadequately resolved components in the complex mixture under analysis. Considering these problems, an overall analytical strategy and an understanding of the analytical process is required for such cases of assessment and evaluation of environmental pollutants.