DETERMINATION OF ORGANIC POLLUTANTS IN LAND APPLIED MUNICIPAL WASTE-WATER SLUDGES BY TOXICITY CHARACTERISTIC LEACHING PROCEDURE (TCLP) AND EXTRACTION PROCEDURE TOXICITY TEST (EP)

Triplicate wastewater sludge samples, from three small municipal facil ities that received no industrial inputs, were analyzed by the Extract ion Procedure Toxicity Test (EP) and Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP). These tests evaluate the potential for organic and i norganic chemicals to leach from the sludge. Six surrogate chemicals w ere spiked into the sludges to monitor recoveries of specific chemical s by the two procedures. The recoveries for the surrogate chemical spi ked into the sludges were low (0.1-33%) and variable for both tests. E P and TCLP tests performed similarly in that both tests yielded highly variable results in terms of the number of chemicals and the concentr ations detected in the replicate samples. Only four organic pollutants (p-cresol, dichlorodimethoxybenzene, dimethylpentanol, and tetramethy lbutylphenol), at microgram per kilogram concentrations, were identifi ed in the sludge samples. Based on this research, few organic pollutan ts appear to be leached from municipal-only wastewater sludges.