ABSTRACT
References.....................................................................................................................................399
Modern society releases numerous man-made chemicals into the environment every day. The
emissions, from agriculture, industry, and municipalities, end up in the air, soil, surface, and
ground water. Streams and rivers transport herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, halogenated
aromatic hydrocarbons, and other trace contaminants into the oceans and large lakes where
they cause widespread environmental damage and possible public health problems. Humans
are usually exposed to pollutants by consuming contaminated water [1], but they can ingest
them at any point in the food chain. Regulatory agencies have created guidelines to minimize
public exposure to harmful pollutants and to protect public health [2,3]. The European Union
Drinking Water Directive regulates the maximum admissible concentration of pesticides to
0.1 mg/L (0.1 ppb) for an individual pesticide and 0.5 mg/L (0.5 ppb) for total pesticides [4]. The
maximum allowed concentration of any member for the s-triazine class of pesticides in drinking
water is 3 mg/L in the United States [5]. A result of these low limits is that sensitive analytical
methods are required to routinely monitor pollutant levels in the environment. Immunoassays
(IAs) are one of the more promising techniques for sensitively and inexpensively monitoring
pollutants in the environment. Some environmental IA kits are commercially available products
such as Millipore and Ohmicron [6,7].
