Comment on “A review of public and environmental consequences of organic germanium” by Zheng and co-workers

Abstract

This letter carefully evaluates and attempts to correct errors contained in the article “A review of public and environmental consequences of organic germanium” by Zheng and co-workers published in this journal in 2020. The aim of this letter is to clarify what “organic germanium” is and to prevent the propagation of errors in the scientific literature.

Keywords:

• Germanium
• organic germanium

Handling Editor:

• Jörg Rinklebe

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Professor Mengchang He (School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, China) for providing information concerning germanium values in Chinese standards: Environmental quality standards for surface water (GB 3838-2002), Integrated wastewater discharge standard (GB 8978-19968978-1996), and Standards for drinking water quality (GB5749-2022).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).