In Japan, collected PCBs have been kept by manufacturers or sellers. Due to the big concerns for the risk at accident, however, proper treatment of PCBs is seriously required. This report reviewed international trends of PCB management, summarizing PCB treatment technologies and environmental behaviors. It was mainly based on reports at the “International Seminar on PCB Management”, which was held in December, 1996, and comparatively discussed the present PCB management in Japan and those in other countries, Although the concentration of PCBs defining PCB products differed with the country or the area, many countries drew the line at 50 ppm, and the lowest one was 2 ppm. Every country has established regulations for PCB management, and now it is required to manage and open the inventory of stored PCBs and to regulate the methods of their safekeeping and treatment. Europe and US have taken action on early disposal of PCBs in more earnest than Japan. That is mainly because they have been focused on the risk of PCB accidents including PCB firing and leakage in transit. Recently chemical treatment techniques have developed and discussed, and are now almost practical besides incineration treatment.

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Mutagenic activity of 12 HPLC labeling reagents, which are widely used in analytical laboratories, were assessed by the preincubation assay using Salmonella typhimurium TA98 and TA 100 under condition with or without metabolic activation by S9mix.
The compounds tested were : 1-benzyl-3-p-tolyltriazene [BTT], 1-p-nitrobenzyl-3-p-tolyltriazene [NBTT], N-chloromethylphthalimide [CMP], N-chloromethyl-4-nitrophthalimide [CMNP], 9-chloromethylanthracene [CMA], O- (p-nitrobenzyl) -N, N'-diisopropylisourea [NBDI], 7-acetoxy-4-bromomethylcoumarin [BrMAC], 4-bromomethyl-7-methoxycoumarin [BrMMC], phenacyl bromide [PB], p-phenylphenacyl bromide [PPB], p-bromophenacyl bromide [BPB] and m-methoxyphenacyl bromide [MPB] . They are all used as the labeling reagents for detecting carboxylic acids by HPLC. Among these compounds, six compounds, BTT, NBTT, CMP, CMNP, CMA and NBDI showed high mutagenicity except in the case of NBDI with TA98. These chemicals showed higher mutagenicity for TA100 than TA98. BTT, NBTT and CMA showed higher mutagenicity without S9mix than with S9mix. Four kinds of phenacyl bromides (PBs) dissolved in DMSO showed mutagenicity against TA 100 without S9mix, though these compounds dissolved in acetone did not. It was suggested that the PBs dissolved in DMSO were oxidized to be mutagenic phenylglyoxals. No mutagenicity was observed by 2 coumarins reagents.

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A method is described to determine o-, m- and p-phenylenediamines (PDs) in exhaust gas. PDs were collected using Sep-Pak Plus PS-2 cartridge conditioned with ethanol and eluted with ethanol. An internal standard decanonitrile was added to the eluate for capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Applicable water contents of gas samples by the method were less than 1.4% for o- and p-PD and less than 18.3% for m-PD.
The recoveries and their relative standard deviations were more than 91.7% and less than 5.2% respectively on 4 runs. The detection limits were 250-330 μg/m³ for a 10-l volume of gas sample. PDs were detected in exhaust gases from a dye industry in the range 300-620 μg/m³ at the inlet of a scrubber.

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A method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of inorganic As (III), Sb (III) and Se (IV) by hydride generation inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrophotometry (HG/ICP-AES), based on the use of citric citrate buffer.
In citric 'citrate buffer at pH 3.0, it was possible to inhibit the reduction of As (V), Sb (V) and Se (VI) to AsH₃, SbH₃ and H₂ Se and hence to selectively determine As (III), Sb (III) and Se (IV) . This method allowed detection limits of 0.2 ng As (III) /ml, 0.2 ng Sb (III) /ml and 1.4 ng Se (IV) /ml and quantitative limits of 1 ng As (III) /ml, 1 ng Sb (III) /ml and 4 ng Se (IV) /ml. The calibration curves of As (III) and Sb (III) were liner from 1 to 100 ng/ml, while that of Se (IV) was liner from 4 to 100ng/ml.
The method can be applied to determine As (III), Sb (III) and Se (IV) in river water, ground water and soil solution.

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Determination of bisphenol A in air has been developed using gas chromatography (GC) /mass spectrometry (MS) . Air samples were collected on the glass fiber filter and were digested with methanol. After the methanol extract was evaporated to dryness, the acetic anhydride acetylation in the presence of pyridine was performed. The toluene extract containing the acetylated bisphenol A was determined by the GC/MS method. The detection limit of bisphenol A was 1.7ng/m³. The concentration range of bisphenol A in air was 2.9-3.6ng/m³.

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Effects of cigarette smoking on the personal exposure to mutagens in air were demonstrated. Airborne particulate and gaseous samples were collected by filters and adsorbent tubes with mini pump for 24 hours. Urine samples were also collected simultaneously for 24 hours. The concentrations of nicotine and 7 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in personal exposure air samples were determined with GC/MS analysis and with HPLC/spectrofluorometric analysis, respectively. The mutagenicity of airborne particulate samples were assayed with Salmonella typhimurium strain TM677 in the absence of S9mix. The concentrations of nicotine and its metabolite cotinine in urine samples were determined with GC/MS analysis. The mutagenicity of Sep-Pak tC₁₈ extracts for urine samples were assayed with Salmonella typhimurium strains TA100, TA98 and YG1024 in the presence and absence of S9mix.
The concentration of nicotine in personal exposure air showed good correlations with the mutagenicity of personal exposure air, with the concentration of cotinine in urine and with the mutagenicities of urine, especially in the presence of S9mix. The correlation of the urinary mutagenicity with the concentration of pyrene in the air were better than those with other PAHs in the air. Also a good correlation was obtained between the concentration of cotinine in urine and the mutagenicities of urine, however their correlations were decreased in the case of non-smokers'.

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Determination of trace amounts of anionic surfactant with an enrichment by air stripping method was proposed. Addition of tetra-n-pentyl ammonium bromide as a counter ion was effective for recovery of anionic surfactant. The recovery was about 100%. However, same good recovery was obtained without counter ion in the presence of 3% sodium chloride. The necessary time to take 20ml of froth solution from 1.1l sample solution was within 2 min. The surfactant solution resulted was determined by Ethyl Violet method. In the case of sea water sample, washing of the toluene phase with sodium sulfate-Ethyl Violet solution was required. Anionic surfactnt in real samples near 1 × 10^-8 mol/l can be determined by the proposed method.

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The sample collection/introduction method to observe the long term average concentration of the hazardous air pollutants using capillary GC/MS was examined. The system consists of sample collection part with two sampling canisters and canister-cleaning sytem, and sample concentration/introduction system to GC. Continuous sample collection is possible by the alternate use of the two canisters for air sampling. The effective data collection to get the average concentration in air can be achieved by the small number of the data because of the reduction of the number of analysis.

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