Main Contaminants and Priority Pollutants from Waste Sites: Criteria for Selection with the Aim of Assessment on the Groundwater Path

Many, particularly organic substances found in groundwaters contaminated by waste sites are exclusively anthropogenic. Thus, on the contrary to many inorganic substances, their mere presence downstream of a contaminated site often indicates an influence of the leachate on the groundwater. So far, about 1000 organic substances have been identified in contaminated groundwaters downstream of waste deposits. It is impossible in practice to routinely analyse every groundwater sample for all of these substances, so that there must be a specific limitation of their number. The following procedure for the selection of main contaminants and priority pollutants is primarily applicable to groundwater contaminations by waste sites. For contaminated industrial land this holds true in a limited way only as investigations of the latter ones have to take into account substances which are to be expected due to specific production processes (targets).