NO Sludge So Dirty EPA Scientists Don't Know What To Test For 1st - KRT

[hatrack]

CHALMETTE, La. - (KRT) - Environmental technician Tommy DeSaro squatted in a supermarket parking lot in this industrial suburb of New Orleans, his yellow boots sticking and making squishy noises in 6 inches of oily slime.

"It's like walking on honey," DeSaro said Monday, scooping up a handful of the goo with a plastic shovel and shaking it into a sample jar. On Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that these sediments - the mushy leftovers of Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters - are anything but sweet.

The sediments in parts of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes are so contaminated with petroleum products that the EPA hasn't been able to sort out what other potentially hazardous chemicals are spread across the region, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in a news conference. Oily sediment contamination is widespread in testing all along a swath of New Orleans and into St. Bernard Parish, locally called "the smear zone," Johnson said, pointing to a map of dozens of sampling sites.

"Clearly we've got a petroleum - at least in the sites behind me - problem," Johnson said. But that's just a portion of the environmental fallout from the nation's worst natural disaster in the last generation:

Floodwaters were full of feces and bacteria.

Public drinking water systems weren't working.

A tremendous yet unknown amount of debris - some of it hazardous - needs to be disposed of.

The storm damaged 31 toxic Superfund sites and 466 chemical, manufacturing or sewage treatment plants.

EPA officials keep finding empty drums of hazardous material, including one large, red hazardous medical waste container.

EDIT

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/nation/12645969.htm

[baby_bear]

1. The petroleum is so high it makes it difficult

Analytically speaking, the lab would have to dilute the samples considerably to be able to detect concentrations of potentially more toxic chemicals that are present to a much lower degree than are petroleum compounds. This is a very real problem. The dilution might have to be so extreme that the detection limits of the other compounds are exceeded. Detection of chemicals such as dioxins could be impossible under such conditions.

b_b

[NNadir]

2. I very much doubt that most labs have a protocol for effecting separations

on such mixes. One imagines that considerable time will be required even for method development alone.

The GC's, LC's, whatever will give chromatograms that will look like West Virginia used to look before they removed the mountains.

It may take decades to understand what actually happened, longer if - as I increasingly expect - this is a third world country with a third rate scientific capability.

[baby_bear]

3. This is not normally needed

It's true that sometimes one category of chemicals will overwhelm another, but usually it can be dealt with. On an emergency basis, that's a big request.

The amount of petroleum hydrocarbons in all the media in the New Orleans area - air, water, soil - must be incredible. Just think of all the petro and other chemical plants in the area. One just can shake one's head and assume the worst.

At least they don't have the problem of particulates as they did in New York City.

One has to look for bright spots.

b_b

[NNadir]

4. I disagree. One can deal with these issues when one has a knowledge of

the matrix. However the matrix is a complete unknown. Were it limited to petroleum based hydrocarbons it would be one thing, but it is not; it is a mixture of household chemicals, industrial chemicals, oil related hydrocarbons, sewage, decomposing organics, etc, etc. Moreover, this is a multiphasic system. Even sampling techniques are, in my mind, problematic.

Moreover the stability of analytes is completely unknown and the capacity for interactions between potential analytes is rather large, I think. I would imagine as well that even the construction of calibration curves would be difficult, given that no one has a clue about where to start.

I imagine this case will generate a slew of papers, and a good deal of controversy.

One can, of course, get some idea of what's in there, but this is a very, very serious analytical challenge.