Basics
Welcome to the German Environmental Specimen Bank
On these pages we would like to introduce the Environmental Specimen Bank to you. Take a look behind the scenes and learn more about the tasks and working methods.
Introduction
The German Environmental Specimen Bank (ESB) is an archive for samples that can be used to document and assess the quality of the environment in which we live. These samples are representative for a particular area, and are collected regularly, to be able to monitor changes of pollution over the course of time.
Procedures
Collecting - Processing - Storage - Analysis
Tasks and Targets
The Environmental Specimen Bank is a major component of the German environmental observation system. It provides a scientific basis for decisions by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) concerning what action it considers necessary as a means of protecting the environment and monitoring the efficacy of such action.
Development and Organisation
The idea of creating an archive for environmental specimens was first proposed by German and American scientists in the early 1970s. Experts in various scientific disciplines got together for informal discussions, leading to the first international conferences held in 1977 and 1978 to define a concept for environmental specimen banking and to agree on the choice of bioindicators.
Concept
The official guidelines for the operation of the German Environmental Specimen Bank are laid down in a concept document.
Standard operating procedures
To achieve a high degree of quality assurance, every step in the procedure from sampling through transport, preparation and analysis of the specimen to long-term storage is the subject of binding Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for each type of specimen.
Specimen archive
The long-term storage of environmental and human samples is one of the key tasks of the Environmental Specimen Bank. The archived samples form a kind of ‘memory of the environment’: they document the state of the environment at the time each sample was taken and make it possible to investigate new research questions even years or decades later. Thanks to this long-term archiving, scientists can trace changes retrospectively, investigate new substances and assess developments that were not yet foreseeable at the time of the original sampling.