Water pollutant catalogue of the IfW

The Water Pollutant Catalogue (WPK) of the former Institute for Water Management (IfW) was a loose-leaf collection, of which four issues were published. The document provided here is a scan of the loose-leaf collection with all issues, which were housed in three binders. The data sheets of all issues are arranged in alphabetical order; it should be noted that the spelling of substances deviates from today’s common standards (e.g. Äthylen instead of Ethylen). The document comprises over 1600 pages in DIN A5 format. You can download the entire WPK here as a searchable PDF file — however, the file size of approx. 525 MB is considerable and may require a correspondingly long download time.

Structure of the Water Pollutant Catalogue

In the WSK, data and information on almost 1,000 substances were compiled according to a defined structure. For the vast majority of substances these are defined individual substances. However, some mixtures of substances were also assessed, particularly where they were products of companies from the former GDR (e.g. herbicides). Each recorded substance was described according to the following 14 criteria.

1 Chemical designation or trade product name
2 Assignment of substance groups by functional groups
3 Structural formula, characterisation of the commercial product
4 Occurrence of the substance in major GDR commercial products
5 Solubility in water
6 State of matter, appearance, organoleptic properties
7 Degradation mechanisms and elimination options
8 Warm-blooded toxicity
9 Hygienic and other limit or guideline values
10 Toxicity to aquatic organisms
11 Analytical notes
12 Special remarks
13 General assessment (classification into water pollutant category)
14 Source attribution

Reference

A summary of the study results on the biological degradability of the pollutants contained in the WSK can be found in the following articles by Jörg Wotzka, Steffi Pfitzner and Bärbel Giest:

  • Biochemical degradability of selected organic compounds; Part 1
    Deutsche Gewässerkundliche Mitteilungen (DGM) 37th year, 1993, no. 5/6, pp. 106 to 113
  • Biochemical degradability of selected organic compounds; Part 2
    DGM 38th year, 1994, no. 1/2, pp. 10 to 17