ABSTRACT
Clean water is essential to human survival and the earliest environmental regulations dealt with contamination of local water sources. Water samples, like other types of environmental samples, must be collected with both the purpose of the study and the requirements of the analysis method firmly in mind. Some of the major regulations for water in the United States are: The Clean Water Act, The Safe Drinking Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Toxic Substances Control Act, and Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Biological examinations may be done on water samples, for example, for algae, phytoplankton, and various bacterial species. Potentiometric and voltammetric measurements are often used in water analysis. Metals present in water samples can be arbitrarily divided into the two types: dissolved metals or suspended metals. Polycarbonate or cellulose acetate filters with 0.45 µm pores are used for initial separation of suspended metals from dissolved metals, if this is desired.
