Experiences in Environmental Specimen Banking

Abstract

For the past 10 years, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has been involved in environmental specimen banking activities. These activities have resulted in the development of collection, storage, processing, and analysis procedures for long-term archiving of a variety of environmental specimens including human liver, fish muscle and liver, oysters, mussels, sediment, and seal tissues. In this paper, we describe some of the experiences and results from these efforts as related to environmental trend monitoring and the potential value of a specimen bank for future retrospective analyses.

Key Words:

• Specimen banking
• environmental monitoring
• trace elements
• polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
• marine pollution