Strategies for the detection of persistent bioaccumulating toxicants (PBT)

Title:	Strategies for the detection of persistent bioaccumulating toxicants (PBT)
Category:	Oekotoxzentrum - Aktuelle Stunde
Date:	15. May 2009, 14:00 - 15:30
Venue:	Eawag Dübendorf
	Forum Chriesbach D24
Speaker:	Prof. Karl-Werner Schramm, Helmholtz Zentrum München
Organisation:	Oekotoxzentrum
Download:	as calendar event

PBT are defined as “Organic substances that are persistent, bioaccumulating and possess toxic characteristics likely to cause adverse human health or environmental effects”. Procedures to identify unknown PBT in the natural and technical environment are highly required. Therefore, first sample pretreatment procedures have been developed for example simple pretreatments of lipophilic extracts with acidified silica can serve as a first readily performed attempt to identify unknown PBT.

The procedure employed for the identification of unknown PBT resulted –besides the information about toxicity determined with bioassays- in some library matches which are depicted for environmental samples (soil, compost), samples of technical origin (flue-gas, fly ash, soot), biological samples (breastmilk, vegetables) etc. Further toxicological and chemical investigations of the pure compounds found and characterized will confirm those as PBT.