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Pre- and Early EPA Monitoring
Oral Presentation
Prepared by L. Keith
Instant Reference Sources, 329 Claiborne Way, Monroe, GA, 30655
Contact Information: larrykeith@earthlink.net; 770-267-3686
ABSTRACT
After Rachael Carson's "Silent Spring" book was published in 1962, environmental chemists began to analyze for pesticides. However, thousands of other organic chemicals from industrial sources were not able to be identified or their quantities measured. Pioneering chemists in a few labs around the world began to try to analyze for some of these unknown chemicals in rivers and industrial effluents using, for example, large columns of activated carbon extracted with chloroform and then analyzing the extracts with GC, IR, NMR, and MS. Attention on organic chemicals in drinking water first became of significant interest when chloroform was found in it everywhere in the world and the mystery of its source was finally solved. Then, when over a hundred organic chemicals were identified by GC-MS in New Orleans drinking water in 1974 and 1975, a series of national monitoring studies were initiated. These resulted in a search for a GC-MS instrument that could be used throughout the EPA. However, the defining watershed for environmental monitoring occurred in 1976 when EPA lost a suit and was required to analyze for a list of “Priority Pollutants” in industrial water sources even though there were no methods for sampling, storing, or analyzing them. The presentation concludes with a summary of how these problems (which were apparently not significant to non-chemists) were solved.
Oral Presentation
Prepared by L. Keith
Instant Reference Sources, 329 Claiborne Way, Monroe, GA, 30655
Contact Information: larrykeith@earthlink.net; 770-267-3686
ABSTRACT
After Rachael Carson's "Silent Spring" book was published in 1962, environmental chemists began to analyze for pesticides. However, thousands of other organic chemicals from industrial sources were not able to be identified or their quantities measured. Pioneering chemists in a few labs around the world began to try to analyze for some of these unknown chemicals in rivers and industrial effluents using, for example, large columns of activated carbon extracted with chloroform and then analyzing the extracts with GC, IR, NMR, and MS. Attention on organic chemicals in drinking water first became of significant interest when chloroform was found in it everywhere in the world and the mystery of its source was finally solved. Then, when over a hundred organic chemicals were identified by GC-MS in New Orleans drinking water in 1974 and 1975, a series of national monitoring studies were initiated. These resulted in a search for a GC-MS instrument that could be used throughout the EPA. However, the defining watershed for environmental monitoring occurred in 1976 when EPA lost a suit and was required to analyze for a list of “Priority Pollutants” in industrial water sources even though there were no methods for sampling, storing, or analyzing them. The presentation concludes with a summary of how these problems (which were apparently not significant to non-chemists) were solved.