Detailed analysis of anion-water clusters extracted from MD simulations reveals that the total ion-water interaction energy (considering two solvation shells around the ion) is systematically larger for a given ion in bulk water than it is for the same ion near the air/water interface. The same is true for the CT-free polarization component of the total interaction energy, which is interesting given that polarization is often assumed to play a central role in surface activity , although this contention is disputed . In any case, we observe systematically larger polarization energies in bulk water for both the "soft" anions with low surface charge density that are considered surface active (Br -, I -, ClO - 4 , and SCN -) as well as for hard anions that are not considered surface active (CN -, OCN -, and NO - 2 ). That said, systematic differences in the mean values E int and E pol in bulk versus interfacial environments are rather small in comparison to the magnitude of the instantaneous fluctuations in E int and E pol .