ORIGINAL ARTICLE Phenolics occurrence in surface water of the Dniester river basin (West Ukraine): natural background and industrial pollution M. Sprynskyy Æ M. Lebedynets Æ J. Namies ´nik Æ B. Buszewski Received: 4 June 2006 / Accepted: 12 December 2006 / Published online: 10 January 2007 Ó Springer-Verlag 2007 Abstract Phenolics’ occurrence in surface water of the Dniester river basin (West Ukraine) with the def- inition of the natural background is studied. The main attention is given to the Upper Dniester basin and its tributary Stryj as the parts of the Sub-Carpathian oil- and gas province with the numerous objects of oil industry. The total amount of phenolics in water is studied. Phenolics’ concentrations from the first micrograms to the first milligrams per litre have been found in the surface water of the region. The natural background is defined as 0.012 mg l –1 for the areas out of the industrial influence. The anthropogenic part of phenolics is caused mainly by oil industry. The oil- producing objects provide the main phenolics’ releases in the region, due to the low protection level of mechanical facilities as well as to breach of techno- logical norms on the oil-extracting objects. A man- made pollution of the basin water has a regional character and the natural self-purification processes seem to be insufficient for its neutralisation on the plains in particular. Keywords Ukraine  Industrial pollution  Natural background  Phenolics  Water quality Introduction Today, phenols are the widespread pollutants of natural water. Although phenols seem to be readily biodegradable in water and soil (Dluhy et al. 1996; Dluhy and Bales 1996; Chmarzynski et al. 1999), they are found in water for a long time if a large amount has been released or if steady low amounts are released over a long time. Phenols demand a detailed investi- gation in terms of their behaviour in the environment as well as in terms of their chemical analysis (Licha and Sauter 2002; Buszewski et al. 2003). In chemistry, phenols, at times also called phenolics, are a class of chemical compounds including a hydroxyl group (–OH) bonded to a six-membered aromatic ring. The simplest member of the class is phenol (C 6 H 5 OH) proper. In this study, the term phenolics (or phenols) has been used for all compounds of the corresponding class. Phenolics are mainly man-made chemicals produced in a large quantity, although they exist naturally too. Petroleum extracting and producing, petrochemical, coal conversion, pesticide, paint, paper and phenol- producing industries are the main human-caused sources of phenolic compounds emissions to the envi- ronment (Tyagi et al. 1993; Lipnizki et al. 1999; Sheikheldin et al. 2000; Santos and Linardi 2001; Veeresh et al. 2005). Wastewaters of coal gasification, petroleum refinery, general petrochemical industry, pesticide manufacturing and plastic factory contain total phenols to 463; 6—88l; 50–600; 210 and M. Sprynskyy (&)  B. Buszewski Department of Environmental Chemistry and Ecoanalytics, Faculty of Chemistry, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun ´ , Poland e-mail: sprynsky@yahoo.com M. Lebedynets Department of Ecological and Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, Faculty of Geology, Ivan Franko L’viv National University, L’viv, Ukraine J. Namies ´nik Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Gdan ´ sk University of Technology, Gdan ´ sk, Poland 123 Environ Geol (2007) 53:67–75 DOI 10.1007/s00254-006-0619-0