Evolution of Organic Analytical Methods in Environmental Forensic Chemistry

Over the past few decades the development of environmental regulations, advances in analytical chemistry and other scientific disciplines, and increased rigor in quality control procedures have created a new discipline, environmental forensics. The need for analytical methods that determine qualitatively and quantitatively organic compounds in the environment, especially in drinking waters, was recognized in the early 1950s. These methods were developed gradually by the early 1960s. The important tools of gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy that evolved in the 1970s provided the early environmental forensic chemist for the first time with the ability to produce scientifically sound data that was admissible in court. By the 1990s, multivariate statistical techniques became available and accepted, including principal component analysis (PCA) and polytopic vector analysis (PVA). These techniques, coupled with the advancing analytical methods, have enabled forensic investigator tools to evaluate and demonstrate unique attributes of a set of data. Analyses of marker compounds, PCBs, PCDD/Fs and petroleum hydrocarbons are all shown to be potentially valuable in deciphering the source and fate of contamination. This paper shows how advancements in environmental analytical chemistry provide the forensic chemist with tools to assess the source(s) of site contamination.