Operation of the U.S. Pilot National Environmental Specimen Bank Program

Abstract

The concept of an environmental specimen bank for archiving and retrospective analysis of biological and environmental samples has been widely recognized as an important component of systematic environmental monitoring. Two international workshops, held in 1977 and 1978, have issued recommendations for the establishment of environmental monitoring and specimen banking programs (1,2). In the United States the historical development during the 1970’s of the concept of a National Environmental Specimen Bank (NESB) has been reviewed previously by Goldstein (3,4). The purpose of such a national system would be [1] to detect changes in the environment, using bioaccumulators as indicators, on a real-time basis (i.e., monitoring), [2] to distinguish such changes from natural inputs, and [3] to provide a “bank” of well preserved and documented environmental samples for retrospective analyses in future years as analytical techniques improve or as new pollutants are identified.