editorial
Challenges in Environmental Analytical Chemistry
T
he wastes of human existenceOfrom the household sewage that we generate to the effluents of our industries to our worn-out and discarded possessionsOhave always posed the danger of altering and damaging our natural environment. In the latter part of the 20th century, these dangers came into sharper focus, and more generalized steps to limit them appeared. Chemical industry, a particular former culprit, now practices a much improved level of stewardship of the chemicals it producesOand the associated wastesOin the Responsible Care program (http://www.responsiblecare.org/). Government regulation has played an important role, reflecting a general societal concern about our environment. Research by chemists of many stripes has given us a much better picture of the chemistry of our environment. Yet a great deal remains to be understood at the research level to guide policy makers and industrialists as to what future steps will be needed to ameliorate our global human impacts. I point here to a 2003 report from the National Research Council, The Environment: Challenges for the Chemical Sciences in the 21st Century (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/ 10803.html). This report discusses major environmentally related advances in the chemical and neighboring disciplines in recent decades and proposes a number of environmentally related grand challenges in the chemical sciences. I recommend it for a general overview of the role of analytical chemistry since our subdiscipline takes a prominent place in the discussion of both the advances and the remaining challenges. The advances include enormous improvements in analytical sensitivity, characterization of single aerosol particles by MS, and development of powerful chromatographic tools for resolution of complex environmental matrices, to name a few of the many. Many past (and no doubt future) challenges are associated with releases of undesirable chemicals into the air, water, and soil. Sometimes such releases occur in a context of desirable
10.1021/AC1003079 2010 AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
Published on Web 02/10/2010
acts such as disinfection of drinking water with chlorine, which can release potentially harmful by-products, and replacement in refrigerators of fluid ammonia with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are safer coolant phases but can lead to atmospheric ozone depletion. Discoveries of the unintended consequences are dominated by advances in analytical measurements. These two examples also serve to bring out the need for environmental and chemical systems modeling that allows accurate anticipation of ensuing problems before initiating seemingly desirable programs. A “Grand Challenge” posed for analytical chemistry is to develop a capability for sampling and monitoring air, water, and soil much more extensively and frequently than is now possible. Such goals will require improvements in sampling methodology and in techniques for remote measurements, as well as approaches that greatly lower per-sample and per-measurement costs. The community of analytical chemists that work on the methodology of field measurements perhaps should heed some of the approaches being pursued for bedside medical diagnostics. I’ll let the reader directly peruse other Challenges in the report. Lastly, I’ll observe that the world is a big place, and concern for and attention to environmental issues is geographically very uneven. A general Grand Challenge is how to monitor the environment and detect problems in the face of societal and governmental instabilities that pose local security concerns. This brings the topic of remote sampling and measurement into even sharper focus.
MARCH 1, 2010 / ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
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