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Those Chemical Lab Tests Data – Some Context

Published November 16, 2024

What do the soil/water test results really mean?

Okay, you’ve tested the water or soil samples from your site and the chem lab gave you the printout of the results. But what do the numbers mean? Most people frankly have no idea. Is it unhealthy to be around the site, is it life threatening, is it safe….and how would I find out? These are several questions that should be answered.

Let me give you a perspective and use one chemical as an example.

The federal regulatory concentration of PCE permitted in groundwater is 5 parts per billion.

PCE– or tetrachlorethylene — is a well-known dry cleaning solvent.

What does that mean? Let me translate that number. The regulatory concentration of PCE @ 5 parts per billion is equivalent to dissolving 2/3’s of an aspirin tablet in a 16,000 gallon railroad tank car of water.

Let that sink in for a moment, yup it’s that’s small – and yet, it can measured by chemical lab instrumentation.

The available documentation that describes the health effects of various chemicals and products can be found in the documentation called Material Safety sheets. These MS sheets are required by law to accompany up every product sold in the U.S. You can request them from the manufacturer; or, look online at the National Library of Medicine website https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ which is an incredible website for environmental health data.

Since we are talking understanding data, let’s go one more step.

Let’s discuss water leaks -and let me translate the numbers because

water leaks are generally overlooked as a source of environmental problems.

This chart we give you some idea of the impact of what we would Let me define, or characterize water leaks by defining them this way:

• A Drip [sporadic] = 1,500 gallons of water per month
• Trickle [constant] = 2,700 gallons of water per month
• 1/32th inch opening = 6,300 gallons of water per month
• 1/16th inch opening = 33,000 gallons of water per month

So to get a real handle on what these numbers mean let’s a assume a leak from a 1/16th inch opening for 1 year….that would amount a leak of 396,000 gallons.

……Or, this leak would result in filling up 60% of an Olympic sized pool.

Not incidental….by any measure.

This is Dr. Bart Sokolow, we’ll talk again.