Detection and remediation of soil and aquifer systems contaminated with petroleum products: an overview

Fate of organic chemicals in the subsurface strata is not very well underst ood. It has only been a decade or two that environmental scientists are foc using their attentions on remediating sites that are contaminated with orga nic chemicals. Different routes of soil and groundwater contamination by pe troleum hydrocarbon compounds and their partitioning into gaseous, aqueous and pure phases in the subsurface strata are discussed, A summary of the te chniques used for treating hydrocarbon-contaminated soil and groundwater an d their application limitations are presented. United States Environmental Protection Agency's (US-EPA) methods 8260, 8270 and 418.1 for detection and quantitation of petroleum range hydrocarbon in soil and aqueous samples an d some recently developed mathematical models used to predict the fate and transport of petroleum range compounds in aquifer systems are briefly discu ssed. Results of some toxicological studies on light and heavy petroleum hy drocarbon are presented. It is concluded that reaching an environment free of hydrocarbon contamination needs broad public understanding of the risks associated with these compounds. Proper management and careful handling of petroleum products reduces the possibility of spills, Replacing old and lea king underground storage tanks with new double wall tanks equipped with lea k detectors and cathodic protection could significantly improve the quality of our precious and fragile groundwater resources, (C) 2000 Elsevier Scien ce B.V. All rights reserved.