CASE OF LOGNORMALLY DISTRIBUTED TPH IN CONTAMINATED SOIL

A land-farming project to remove diesel fuel from soil, which showed e xtremely variable total-petroleum-hydrocarbon (TPH) concentrations, is presented. Experiments showed that the variability was not an artifac t of the TPH analytical method, but reflected the random distribution of contaminant in the soil. It was found that the data were well fit b y a lognormal distribution. The implications of the sampling statistic s on the remediation standard are discussed using the data, the lognor mal distribution, and the remediation standard imposed on this particu lar remediation project.