Environmental specimen banking. A complement to environmental monitoring.

The risk of environmental damage from the countless chemicals and chemical combinations is estimated by monitoring the air, water, soil, and biota and comparing the findings to known risks. Environmental monitoring involves the collection and chemical analysis of selected samples to determine pollutant trends, forecast damage to the environment, and develop control strategies. However, past experience has taught us that there is always a level of uncertainty associated with the chemical analysis of complex environmental samples. This uncertainty arises from insufficient analytical sensitivity to detect trace levels of damaging pollutants, unsuspected analytical inaccuracies associated with unknown interferences, and limited resolution to identify and quantify all pollutants of interest. Environmental specimen banking can serve as a complement to environmental monitoring by allowing future chemists to analyze preserved samples retrospectively with emerging analytical methodologies. In other words, specimen banking will give later environmentalists the opportunity to characterize chemicals whose hazards were not recognized or for which sufficiently accurate analytical methods were not available. This will enable us to determine whether a newly recognized pollutant is truly a new environmental threat or whether it has always been with us. Although environmental specimen banking is still in its infancy, we now have many experiences that clearly demonstrate that valuable information can be produced. In all environmental monitoring programs, some consideration should be given to preserving selected samples. Ideally, specimen banking will involve; (1) a stable funding commitment, (2) a cryogenic storage facility, (3) development of selection criteria to collect the most valuable environmental specimens, and (4) a continuing research program to develop optimal procedures for collecting, handling, and preserving specimens.