The Rhine

The payoff for this program came in December 1990, when for the first time in 30 years a large Atlantic salmon was fished from the Sieg, a tributary of the Rhine in West-Central Germany. The catch proved what officials had hoped If you clean the water and clear the way, someday the fish will come back. The event gave new life to the Salmon 2000 project, and further success followed. In 1994, researchers found recently hatched salmon in the Sieg, and 1996 a salmon was hooked near Baden-Baden. In 1998, encouraged by the 

Meanwhile, not all of the Rhine s pollution problems have been solved. One of the most serious is a huge basin in the Netherlands, into which toxinladen mud dredged from the Port of Rotterdam has been dumped since the 1970s. Contamination levels are falling, but several toxins are very stubborn. 

All along the Rhine, the main source of remaining pollution comes from farm fertilizers, which seep into the river every time it rains. 

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In the most recent and comprehensive study, 230 measurements from 11 sampling points along 225 km of the Rhine and adjoining rivers were made over a period of one year (1991—1992). The concentration of DEHP found varied from 0.11 to 10.3 )-lg/L the latter value is unusually high as evidenced by the mean concentration of only 0.82 )-lg/L (55). 

The waters through which ships travel are categorized by their salt content. The following are approximate values seawater, 3.0 to 4.0% salt coastal brackish water, 1.0 to 3.0% river brackish water, 0.5 to 1.8% salty river water, 0.05 to 0.5% river water, <0.05%. Seawater mainly contains NaCl. The salt content is approximately 1.8 times the chloride ion content. The salt content of the world s oceans is almost the same. Different salt contents can occur in more enclosed seas [e.g., the Adriatic (3.9%), Red Sea (4.1%) and the Baltic (1.0%)]. Table 17-1 gives as an example average analyses for seawater and the Rhine River. 

The Rijnmond area is that part of the Rhine delta between Rotterdam and the North Sea. The Commission for the Safety of the Population at large (COVO) commissioned the study for six chemicals and the operations associated with them acrylonitrile, liquid ammonia, liquid chlorine, LNG, propylene, and part of a separation process (diethanolamine stripper of a hydrodesulfurizer). The study objectives were to evaluate methods of risk assessment and obtain experience with practical applications of these methods. The results were to be used to decide to what extent such methods can be used in formulating safety policy. The study was not concerned with the acceptability of risk or the acceptability of risk reducing measures. 

A cargo barge travels up the Rhine. Though weather conditions can affect timeliness, the economies of scale usually make water transport cheaper than rail. (Corbis Corporation)... 

Fig. 15-7 Relationship between dissolved and total heavy metal concentrations in several rivers. Cross-hatched bands represent range of values from the Ruhr (Imhoff et ah, 1980) W and F represent winter and fall values at a selected station in the Mississippi (Eisenreich et ah, 1980) Triangles represent values from the Rhine river (Davis, 1984).

Adsorption is also important in aquatic systems. For example, 82-85% of the endosulfan residues in water samples taken from the Rhine River (0.2-0.6 ppb) were associated with the particulate phase (Greve and Wit 1971). 

Greve PA, Wit SL. 1971. Endosulfan in the Rhine River. J Water Pollut Control Fed 43 2338-2348. 

Haber found a place to study physical chemistry almost by chance. He had kept constant vigil at the bedside of a dying friend, whose grateful brother suggested that Haber apply to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, where an influential relative could help. The school, near the Rhine River in the center of German liberalism, maintained close ties with a large... 

Paul Muller was born on January 12,1899, outside Basel, a wealthy railroad and chemical center on the Rhine River where Germany, France, and Switzerland meet. His father, Gottlieb, the son of an inn and tavern owner, worked for the Swiss Federal Railways. His mother, Fanny Miiller-Leypoldt, was the family disciplinarian and had belonged to a Lutheran order of deaconesses in her native Germany. 

Muller must have been disappointed to learn that he was not the discoverer of DDT. Sixty-five years earlier and seventy miles down the Rhine River, an Austrian graduate student at the University of Strasbourg had synthesized the compound as part of his chemistry doctoral thesis. Although Othmar Zeidler described many of DDT s properties and developed the method used to make it commercially, he overlooked the compound s insecticidal powers. And because DDT was not used to make dyestuffs, it was soon forgotten. Thus, when Geigy took out the basic Swiss patent in March 1940, it was for DDT s use as an insecticide. 

Ironically, despite all this scientific progress, modern fiberoptic cables went into service during a decade of chemical catastrophes more reminiscent of the old Leblanc factories than of optical fibers superpurity. On December 3, 1984, a cloud of deadly methylisocyanate gas leaked from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India the gas killed more than 3000 people and injured up to 25,000. Two years later in Europe, a Sandoz chemical factory spilled 30 tons of chemicals into the Rhine River, killing fish for 120 miles downstream. In North America, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled crude oil over 1000 miles of Alaskan coastline in 1989. 

Elgersman, F., Emission Factors for Aqueous Industrial Cadmium Discharges to the Rhine Basin. A Historical Reconstruction of the Period 1970-1988, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, 1994. 

Stoeber H, Eberle SH (1974) Organic Acids in the Rhine and Some of its Tributaries. Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe, KFK 1969 UF, pp 58-81... 

A shadow plant at Tuetschental, to produce magnesium, and to stockpile the magnesium Farben gathered abroad. Shadow factories at Doberitz to produce "something" that went to another Farben factory on the Rhine. ("The factories," said the contract,... 

One day in the spring of 1937, Dr. ter Meer and Dr. Ambros began the search for another buna site that was to take them, four years later, to Auschwitz. The prosecution contended that the "possible war" turned their feet toward the East. Only one buna plant was in the Rhine Valley, which offered everything they needed water power, calcium deposits, economy of operation. In and beside the Rhine River were water and rail transportation to take the finished rubber to its nearby destinations. 

But to locate two buna plants on the Rhine was to concentrate too much production in a single area vulnerable to air attack. There was one area left the wide eastern border, rich in coal and water, stretching from East Prussia down to northern Austria. 

I was thinking of the danger from the West. Here is the point where I made my mistake. But 1 experienced the invasion of Ludwigshafcn in 1923, and that illustrated how helpless a country can be without a military force. I experienced these things personally. I was in Ludwigshafen at that time, which is on the left bank of the Rhine. 

Lefebure, Victor. The Riddle of the Rhine Chemical Strategy in Peace and War. New York E.P. Dutton Company, 1923. 

Nolet, B.A., V.A.A. Dijkstra, and D. Heidecke. 1994. Cadmium in beavers translocated from the Elbe River to the Rhine/Meuse estuary, and the possible effect on population growth rate. Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 27 154-161. 

Hendriks, A.J., H. Pieters, and J. de Boer. 1998. Accumulation of metals, polycyclic (halogenated) aromatic hydrocarbons, and biocides in zebra mussel and eel from the Rhine and Meuse Rivers. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 17 1885-1898. 

Hall s process was first operated by the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, a predecessor of ALCOA, in 1889. Heroult s process was first operated by the Societe Metallurgique Suisse at Neulaissen, Switzerland, in 1887, using electric power generated at the Rhine Falls. 

Sediments were mainly sampled in autumn. Two samples taken in spring showed concentrations comparable with those found for the same locations in autumn. Significant levels of 0.3—2.8 p-g g-1 dry weight (d.w.) of NPEO were found in the Dommel, a small tributary of the river Meuse, in samples taken downstream from the effluent discharge of a municipal WWTP, and in samples from the Rhine, Scheldt and Meuse rivers. Elevated levels of NP (0.5—3.8 p,g g-1) were... 

Comparison of Tables 6.2.4 and 6.2.6 shows that dissolved concentrations of NP and NPEO are higher in the Rhine and Meuse rivers than in the Hessian river, which is probably caused by accumulation from diffuse and point sources along the rivers. On the contrary, levels of NPEC in Hessian streams are similar to those observed in the rivers Rhine and Meuse in The Netherlands. An explanation for this could be that degradation occurs relatively more readily in the smaller streams due to slower water velocities and a lower particle density in these waters. 

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