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2004
Conference Paper
Titel
Retrospective analysis of persistent toxic substances in samples from the German environmental specimen bank
Abstract
For the German Environmental Specimen Bank (ESB) samples are taken annually from representative marine, fresh water and terrestrial ecosystems. Pooled and homogenized samples are stored at temperatures below -150 deg C and are available for actual and retrospective monitoring studies. In the marine ecosystems North Sea and Baltic Sea bladder wrack (brown algae), common mussels, eelpout (muscle, liver) and herring gull eggs are sampled. The actual monitoring covers persistent toxic substances (PTS) like dieldrin, HCB and PCB. Recent analyses demonstrate, e.g., that the levels of PCB in North Sea herring gull eggs are decreasing, while the PCB loads of Baltic Sea samples remained constant. Further PTS are analyzed in retrospective monitoring projects. For this purpose time series from the ESB archive are analyzed as batch in order to allow temporal and regional comparisons. A retrospective monitoring for organotin compounds showed that triphenyltin levels decreased in North Sea organisms in the period 1985-1999 while tributyltin concentrations remained constant. A further study proved that alkylphenols/alkylphenol monoethoxylates levels in mussels decreased probably as result of a voluntarily ban on the use of alkylphenolic compounds by detergent manufacturers.