Hydrophobic organic chemicals often occur in the environment as complex mixtures, for which identification and quantification of each component is not feasible. For example, unresolved complex mixtures (UCMs) are commonly found at petroleum contaminated sites; and such hydrocarbons are known to cause narcosis toxicity in an additive fashion. An accurate evaluation of the risk associated with such sites must take into account the cumulative effects of all the chemicals in the UCM. To that end, we developed a method for inferring polyethylene-water partition coefficients using two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC � GC), thereby allowing simultaneous quantitation and characterization (but not identification!) of all UCM components with respect to their bioaccumulation potential. This implies that sampling sites of interest using a polyethylene passive sampler with GC � GC - flame ionization detector analysis will allow simultaneous determination of the freely dissolved concentrations of all organic compounds present in a contaminated sediment.

Estimating the polyethylene-water partition coefficients of organic chemicals using comprehensive 2D gas chromatography

244th National Meeting (2012)

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