Gschwend%20thesis.pdf

-24-
Land animals also utilize vola tiles as chemical messengers. For
example, Wilson (1977) notes that the ant, Acanthomyops claviger, utilizes
several compounds for its interspecific communications including 2, 6-
dimethyl-5-heptenal, citronellal ( AN ), nerol (~ ),
otl
k J ~
geranial ( /W ), undecane, tridecane, pentadecane, 2-tridecanone,
and 2-pentadecanone.
Another important source of volatiles derives from the activities of
man. Industrial processes, as indicated earlier, release large quantities
of volatile organic compounds to the environment (NAS, 1975). Anthropogenic
inputs also come from our use of fossil fuels. Numerous workers (Altshuller
et aL., 1971; Grob and Grob, 1971; Bertsch et aL., 1974; Ciccioli et aL.,
1976; Lonneman et al., 1974). have measured the hydrocarbon concentrations
in urban air samples. They find individual compound concentrations on the
order of ngs/liter-air. The fate of these materials and of the natural
emissions, especially as regards potential transport to the sea, is unknown
(Duce et al., 1974; Duce, 1977; Garrett and Smagin, 1976).
RECENT ADVANCES IN METHODOLOGY
As noted earlier, tremendous advances in the methodology available
for the determination of the volatiles in aqueous samples have been
made within the last five or six years. This progress was motivated by
the biomedical profession's desire to utilize metabolic profiles to assess
patients' health (Horning and Horning, 1971; Zlatkis et al.,.. 1973, Teranishi
et aL., 1972) and the desire to monitor drinking waters and other natural
freshwaters for volatile pollutants (Grob, 1973; Bellar et aL., 1974;