The priority substances of List I, 76/464/EEC Directive, some of which belong to the new Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC, have been monitored in the surface waters of Greece through the developed network of 53 sampling stations. The analytical methods used for the determination of these substances included Purge and Trap-Gas chromatography-Mass spectrometry for volatile and semivolatile organic compounds, Gas Chromatography-Electron Capture Detection for organochlorine insecticides, High Performance Liquid Chromatography for pentachlorophenol and Atomic Absorption Spectrometry for metals. The results have shown the presence of several priority substances in Greek surface waters, in most cases at concentrations well below the regulatory limits. However, non-compliance was observed for a limited number of compounds. The monitoring network and the analytical determinations have to be expanded to more water bodies and more priority substances, in order to safeguard the quality of Greek surface waters.
Pollutants posing health risks to human health and to the aquatic environment often occur in drinking and surface waters, as a result of disinfection practices, agricultural and industrial activities, wastewater discharges. Toxic pollutants belong to different chemical categories, including chlorination by-products, volatile and semivolatile organic compounds, insecticides (organochlorine and organophosphorous), herbicides (triazines and substituted ureas), metals and organotin compounds. Optimization of different analytical methods needed for their laboratory determination is necessary, since most of these pollutants have toxic effects when they are present even at trace concentrations in water. The investigation described here includes optimization of analytical methods applied in the Water and Air Quality Laboratory of the University of the Aegean for determination of 130 toxic pollutants in water, by means of gas chromatography with ECD, NPD, FPD and MS detection, Purge and Trap concentration, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with Diode Array Detection (DAD) and atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). The methods described were selected for application to surface water and drinking water samples from Greece, after experimental modifications which resulted in the best analytical performance achievable with the particular instrumentation, expressed by the calculated recoveries and detection limits.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.