Environmental Specimen Bank - report for the year 2021
Koschorreck, Jan; Körner, Andrea; Weber, Till; Rüther, Maria; Badry, Alexander; Nagorka, Regine; Wellmitz, Jörg; Pirntke, Ulrike; Schmidt, Susanne; Ahting, Maren
Texte - Umweltbundesamt
This report summarises the main work of the Federal Environmental Specimen Bank in 2021.
The Federal Environmental Specimen Bank supports the implementation of the precautionary principle with a scientific infrastructure, a comprehensive database for determining and assessing the current state of the environment and long-term monitoring of the chemical, physical and biological development processes taking place in the environment.
For this purpose, experts collect human samples from selected sites together with ecologically representative environmental samples, archive them at cryogenic temperatures and perform analyses for substances relevant to health and the environment. This also facilitates monitoring the effectiveness of environmental policy measures, such as restrictions on the use of substances.