Analysis of Petroleum Hydrocarbons in Environmental Media - Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon Criteria Working Group Series

The overlying theme to this series is the importance of exposure potential when defining human health risk. The fate and transport of a chemical or mixture defines the exposure route, and in conjunction with receptor properties, concentrations at receptors. If fate and transport is not considered, unrealistic human health risks could be calculated, resulting in misinformed decisions about site clean-up and regulatory guidance. We hope you find these documents useful in your efforts to evaluate and determine acceptable risk-based criteria at petroleum sites. This document provides an overview of the complexities of petroleum hydrocarbon characterization and risk assessment, and a discussion on the analytical methods available. In addition, to descriptions about general analytical methods, a summary is provided of a proposed GC-Based analytical method, developed by the Working group, that reports hydrocarbon results in equivalent carbon number groups or fractions.