ABSTRACT
For some decades chlorinated pollutants have attracted considerable attention. One reason is the environmental harm caused by persistent, organochlorine pollutants such as PCBs, DDT, DDE and chlorinated dioxins. However, usually less than 5% of the organochlorine load (extractable, organically bound chlorine; EOCl) can be accounted for by known pollutants[1-5]. The major proportion (90-99%) of the EOC1 has remained unknown until the early nineties (Fig. 1). It was then discovered that most of the unidentified EOCl in fish from polluted waters and a substantial portion of the unknown EOCl in fish from remote waters, in bivalves and in sediment, consisted of chlorine in ester bound chlorinated fatty acids[6-15]. This has been confirmed by mass spectrometric studies[10,13-17].
