Reference materials and environmental specimen banking

The preservation and protection of the environment has become a major challenge of our times since this has to be compatible with the ecological needs. The concept of Environmental Specimen Banking (ESB) acquires importance in providing the data base for deeper insight into ecochemical processes. Methodological development and preparation of reference materials (RMs) are also essential to such studies. Systematic efforts are to be made to acquire a good number of reference materials to be useful for analysis of toxic as well as essential components. Our experience has shown that it is possible to procure worthy and scientifically valuable specimens from soils and leafy food substances. Exploring preparation of suitable specimens from a country such as India might be a worthy exercise since it is possible to obtain clean specimens in this part of the world. Analytical data for determination of some trace and major elements in prepared RMs are presented.