| Abstract: | Traditional environmental investigations are expensive and time-consuming, involving heavy drilling equipment, several intermediate processes, and analyses at off-site commercial laboratories. New, relatively inexpensive in situ sampling surveys can now quickly generate preliminary data in the field, helping to analyze soil gas and soil and groundwater forvolatile organic compounds (VOCs). Many of the companies that do them now also provide their own mobile laboratories for delineating contaminant plumes more quickly and at less cost than the traditional methods and guiding the placement of groundwater monitoring wells and soil borings. This column describes the main in situ sampling surveys available today, calculates their costs per sample, explores their advantages and disadvantages for remedial investigations, and offers advice on how to carry them out. |
