Measuring amines in Norwegian surface waters

Summary

In summer 2012 we carried out a survey of amine concentrations in 21 Norwegian lakes with the aim of assessing the prevalence of amines in Norwegian lakes and identifying the main factors affecting concentrations of these compounds. The lakes were chosen to cover a range of lake types, water chemistry, catchment land use, and influence of anthropogenic pollution. As intended, the sites chosen covered a wide range in major component water chemistry and spanned gradients in the influence of several natural and anthropogenic drivers, including eutrophication, prevalence of wetlands in the catchment, and acidification. The lack of available data on amines in surface waters is in part due to the analytical challenges associated with analysis of amines in complex environmental matrices, including surface waters. Due to analytical challenges, uncertainty surrounding the measured amine concentrations, and further development of analytical methods, several iterations of the method have been employed by NILU during this study and over the course of NIVA’s collaborative amine work with NILU. Due to this uncertainty in analyzed amine concentrations, we are unfortunately not able to report robust and quality assured data from amine analyses in the current study, nor are we able to assess seasonality in amine concentrations for samples collected for the seasonal study.