Some of the problems associated with published data on the environmental fate of chemicals are unknown quality/reliability, misquoted numbers, citations from other publications and not the original work, data referenced as unpublished or as personal communication, non-corroborating data up to several orders of magnitude apart in different sources, and insufficient documentation. These problems are discussed in the paper and suggestions are made for improving the quality of the literature data. In particular, researchers should apply a sound quality assurance program and adequately document experiments to enable investigators to repeat them. Better attention should be given to writing and proofreading manuscripts to minimize mistakes, and the primary reference should be obtained to assure the correctness of a value. (Copyright (c) 1990 Gordon and Breach, Science Publishers, Inc.)