The following pages contain this image or document
Environmental Specimen Bank: Looking for evidence in Germany’s environmental archive
Have human and environmental exposure to lead been reduced since the ban on leaded petrol? Why has there been no sustainable decline in the PCB count in fish in the lower course of the Rhine? What to make of the concentrations of mercury in young shoots of spruce, seagull eggs, and bream? The federal Environmental Specimen Bank (ESB), Germany’s archive documenting environmental quality, provides exhaustive public information. Since 1981 it has collected environmental and human specimens which it analyses for pollutant substances, and put them in long-term storage. In the meantime, the Bank has secured some 200,000 human samples and about 350,000 environmental subsamples. read more
