promoted the use of open tubular columns in chroma-P tography during the first North American Congress on Chromatography held in Mexico City in 1975. In his lecture, he emphasized that a grace period must be recognized in which open tubular columns (OTCs) replace packed columns before OTCs could become widely accepted on the North American continent. He recommended that chromatographers familiarize themselves with 0.32-mm-i.d. OTCs, and he showed advantages of decreasing the column's internal diameter first to 0.25 mm and later, when column manufacturing technology would be further developed, to even smaller diameters. His pedagogical approach proved to be beneficial both to chromatographers and to instrumentation companies. During the past decade, his predictions have proved to be correct. High performance chromatography has developed into one of the most useful analytical techniques of recent times for environmental trace analysis.
Analytical quantification of various pollutants is the basis of environmental monitoring and management. The results obtained are essential for managerial decision making. Environmental samples are complex, and analytically reliable measurements must be performed on minute amounts of samples that often have nanogram/lalogram analyte concentrations. Successful analysis of these ultratracelevel, multicomponent mixtures requires the miniaturization of instrumentation and the use of a combination of multistep methodologies. Environmental analyses require substantial time-consuming preconcentration and clean-up steps. Usually, the amount of a sample to be analyzed is sufficient for a few injections onto a separation column. However, in the case of capillary columns, the size of