From the Inef website:  “The International Network of Environmental Forensics (INEF) was founded in 2008 to provide a forum for scientists, environmental consultants, regulators and lawyers to share information regarding the use of environmental forensics.  Environmental forensics is the use of scientific techniques to identify and apportion the source(s), age and timing of a contaminant into the environment.  INEF is a non-profit interest group within the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).”

This year’s INEF Conference is in Örebro, Sweden this week.  I’m pleased to have been a part of the conference almost since its inception, having served on the organizing committee in past years and given several invited lectures. Restek has supported the meeting, too, and this year is one of its main sponsors.  As you might imagine when trying to define the source of environmental contamination by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), petroleum hydrocarbons, chlorinated dioxins and furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and other samples defined by complex congener patterns, gas chromatography (GC) plays a significant role.  Restek’s contribution is having GC columns with unique selectivities that can separate critical isomers for accurate source apportionment.

Comprehensive two-dimensional GC (GC×GC), because of its significant increase in peak capacity and its ability to produce highly structured chromatograms, is becoming ever more important in environmental forensics work. This will be the subject of my INEF 2016 lecture, which is titled, “Can GC×GC Ever Be the DNA Profiling of Environmental Forensics?”.  The excellent INEF 2016 program will feature talks by leading scientists in the field (Tue, Wed, Thu).