ABSTRACT
Scientists’ understanding of the environment can only be as good as their knowledge of the identities and quantities of pollutants and other chemical species in water, air, soil, and biological systems. Therefore, proven, state-of-the-art techniques of chemical analysis, properly employed, are essential to environmental chemistry. The present time is a very exciting period in the evolution of analytical chemistry, characterized by the development of new and improved analysis techniques that enable detection of much lower levels of chemical species and a vastly increased data throughput. These developments pose some challenges. Because of the lower detection limits of some instruments, it is now possible to see quantities of pollutants that would have escaped detection previously, resulting in difšcult questions regarding the setting of maximum allowable limits of various pollutants. The increased output of data from automated instruments has in many cases overwhelmed human capacity to assimilate and understand it.
