During the last years the Spanish Analytical Chemistry Society (SEQA) is going to be one of the organising of different International Symposiums on Analytical Methodology in the Environmental field. The first Symposium stemmed from the co-operation agreement between Fundación MAPFRE, for which environmental protection is an important objective, and Perkin-Elmer, which contributed its extensive experience in every aspects of analytical methodology. The success of the first Symposium caused a co-operation of the Association of Environmental Sciences and Techniques (AEST). The second edition was celebrated in Bilbao, the third in Barcelona, the forth in Zamudio (Vizcaya), the fifth in A Coruña (organizated by the Universitary Institute of Environment and the Analytical Chemistry Department of A Coruña University). The sixth edition was celebrated in Madrid and the seventh in Valladolid.
In the last meeting in Huelva, A Coruña was proposed to celebrate the XIII Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Analytical Chemistry Society (SEQA 2003). Moreover this City was chose for the organisation of the VIII Symposium on Analytical Methodology in the Environmental Field (VIII ISAMEF). Due to this coincidence it had been decided to celebrate both meetings together.
Besides, another Companies (Applied Biosystems, Agilent Technologies, Carburos Metálicos, Crison España, Sciware and Fundación AGBAR) had decided to participate in the organisation contributing, as the same as Perkin-Elmer, with their experience in every aspects of analytical methodology and environment. During the last years, due to the negative impact in the environment, there is a rebuff to industrial development. For this, the environment preservation is an important scientific challenge and a necessity for the society, which need to do some actuation to equilibrate the unbalanced caused by the industrial production.
Since analytical methodology constitute a fundamental tool to control, prevent and solve the environment deterioration, in any study carried out in the multi-disciplinary environmental fields is essential to have an important analytical methodology development. The complex and variety of environmental matrices requires the use of different instrumental techniques including hyphenated techniques.
Thus, the coincidence of both important events allows the extensive relation between the Analytical Chemistry and the multi-disciplinary environmental topics. In this way, the Conference should be dealing with subjects, not only, of interest for chemists, but also for physicists, biologists, pharmaceutics, geologists, veterinary surgeon, engineers, environmental sciences graduates, etc., whereas for economists and lawers responsible for several aspects of the environmental management. In this way, the Conference can be turned into a suitable forum and meeting point for professionals from diverse branches of Sciences, Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry.