In the FRG, the synthesis of PCBs was done from 1950 till 1983 in the Bayer AG in Leverkusen. In the former GDR at the Deutsche Solvay-Werke in Westeregeln, 1,000 tons were synthesized from 1955 till 1964, and in the former USSR from 1930 till 1993 at the plants Orgselko in Dzerdzinsk and Orgsynthesis in Novomoskowsk 58,000 tons, in the former (USSR in the enterprise Chemko in Strazske in Eastern Slovakia from 1959 till 1984 2,1482 tons (about 1,600 tons of PCB wastes), in Poland in the electrochemical factory in Zalkovice Bedzinske from 1966 till 1970 and after 1974 in Zaklady Azotowe Tarnow-Mosice in Tarnow not more than 17,500 tons. Publications about PCB production data in western European countries are not known.
The most important basis of this paper are the primary data from about 20 official institutions about the content of PCBs (Sigma cong. 28, 52, 101 LPCB, Sigma cong. 138, 153, 180 = HPCB; Sigma LPCB, HPCB = sPCB) in suspended matter, sediment and fishes from several fresh waters in the Czech Republic, the FRG, and Poland. These data, partly reaching from 1984 till 2004, were statistically calculated and evaluated in tables or pictures as spatial profiles (e.g. rivers Elbe, Rhine, Lippe, and Mosel) or time series. By doing so, it could be found that the sPCB values sometimes were present in surprisingly high amounts at some, mostly industrial sampling points till 2000. being remarkable at the river Elbe, the vicinity of the Skoda enterprise in Mlada Boleslav, the chemical enterprise Spolchemie at the Elbe tributary Bilina in Usti n. L., at the Niederrhein, the sampling point in Hitdorf, influenced by the Bayer-Werke, and in the river Lippe at Marl/Huls. In the Berlin waters, up to now high sPCB can be found in the Unterspree, which may be connected with the huge building activities in the city centre. On the contrary, e. g. in the river Odre, in Brandenburg-Mecklenburg waters, in the lakes in the east of Berlin, in Bavarian rivers and lakes, but also e.g. in lake Constance, and at the Hochrhein on the industrial enterprise Grenzach, in the year 2000 very low sPCB values were found, together with high HPCB shares. The PCBs must be evaluated in another way than e. g. DDT and HCH, since PCB aggregates were in use until recently. In the Regulation (EC) no. 850/2004, Article 9,Monitoring" is said:,The commission should establish approximate programs and mechanisms, consistent with the state of the art, for the regular provision of comparable monitoring data on the presence of PCB in the environment." This is the aim of this paper.