Book reviews

Abstract

ISBN 0 08 024010 1 (hardback); 0 08 024009 7 (softback).It would have been nice to have said that this book answers all the needs of those lecturers seeking a good laboratory guide for environmental chemistry. Unfortunately, despite the fact that many people will find it useful, it suffers from many shortcomings.The authors have built the book around their own laboratory programme for environmental chemistry a t Griffith University in Australia. I t is divided into five parts covering aquatic systems, toxic substances, food additives, chemical ecology and a field survey. Within these five parts is a total of 14 laboratory or field experiments ranging from the measurement of biochemical oxygen demand and water pollutants through to LD,, values for shrimps and thin-layer chromatography on synthetic food colorants.The book is useful in that it contains ideas that can serve as the basis for other modified laboratory procedures. I do, however, question the wisdom of including a laboratory procedure for the assay of aflatoxins in groundnuts for undergraduates. Despite the necessary precautions that the authors have clearly indicated, this is an area of study which even highly experienced chemists treat with considerable caution and should not be in a book at this level.