Variability of butyltin determination in water and sediment samples from european coastal environments

cited By 10International audienceA large amount of data has appeared in the literature within the last few years dealing with the monitoring of butyltin compounds in coastal environments. However, the strategies used strongly differed from one author to another, which led to difficulties in the comparison of contamination levels and the evaluation of long‐term trends. In this paper, different causes of pitfalls due to uncontrolled sources of variability are addressed; they involve precautions to be undertaken for the monitoring of butylins in water and sediment, particularly: sample collection; sample pretreatment (filtration/centrifugation, acidification, sieving); sample storage (different methods for storage and drying procedures); variability over the same site; variations over a tidal cycle; and variability due to diffusion (e.g. due to flushing). Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons Ltd