Baseline contamination assessment for a new resource recovery facility in Germany .1. Concept

This paper presents the scientific concept and experimental background for a series of papers describing a study of the baseline concentrations of environmental contaminants around a new resource recovery facility in Augsburg, Germany. The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of the waste combustion emissions of the facility on the levels of contaminants in the surrounding area. This paper briefly reviews previous studies on this subject and then presents the concept used for this study. The concept focused on measuring ambient air concentrations, and the siting of the sampling stations, the sampling strategy and the chemicals analysed are described. The results of the initial baseline contaminant assessment, which yielded valuable insights into the environmental behaviour of the chemicals, will be presented in a series of subsequent papers, each focusing on a separate group of chemicals. The results of the post-start-up monitoring will be presented at a later date. (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.