Abstracts: Causes and processes of contamination groundwater

313

some values exceed the EU limit for pesticides (0.1 /xg l"1).
REFERENCE
Benefenati,E., Garofani, S, Gacchini, G., Cant,M. &Terreni (1993) Analysis of surface waters with different extractive
procedures. In: Water Pollution II. Modelling, Measuring and Prediction (ed. by L. C. Worbel & C. A. Brebbia).
Computational Mechanics Publications, Wessex Institute of Technology, Southampton, UK.

Aquifer pollution vulnerability maps in the Po River

plain northern Italy
ADRIANO ZAVATTI
PMP-Modena, Viale Fontanelli 21, 41100 Modena, Italy

In 1985 the Italian National Research Council Research Group for the Reference Against
Hydrogeological Disasters launched the special program VAZAR (Vulnerability of
Aquifers in Zones under High Pollution Hazards). Vulnerability maps for many Italian
areas were produced as part of this program.
In Italy, 80% of drinking water comes from groundwater. For this reason the
prevention and prediction of groundwater pollution is very important.
Vulnerability maps were produced for many areas of the Po River plain (northern
Italy). The plain overlies the main aquifer in Italy. It is characterized by variable hydrogeological conditions and variable vulnerability to pollution. Some of these maps are
presented at various scales for the provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena and
Mantua. The applied methodology yielded good correlations between defined vulnerability conditions and actual groundwater pollution.

Need for three-dimensional contaminant delineation to

obtain reliable information for evaluating health risks
from groundwater contamination

GARY A. ROBBINS
Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Connecticut Storrs,
Connecticut 06269, USA

HELEN K. LUNSFORD
Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Undergroutid Storage Tank
Program, 79 Elm Street, Hartford, Connecticut 06105-5129, USA

Robbins (1989), Robbins and Martin-Hayden (1991) and Martin-Hayden et al. (1991)
have shown that water quality data collected from typical monitoring wells used in
contaminant investigations (with screens of the order of 3 m) are inherently biased by
vertical concentration averaging and may provide highly misleading determinations of
contaminant magnitude and extent. They have shown that concentration determinations

314

Abstracts: Causes and processes of contamination groundwater

from typical monitoring wells are influenced by vertical concentration gradients, well
screen length, vertical variations in formation and backfill hydraulic conductivity, the
amount of water removed for purging, and water levels achieved in the well during
purging and when sampling. These same factors need to be considered in defining health
risks to drinking water wells, in that the impact of groundwater contamination on a well
will be influenced by vertical concentration averaging that occurs during pumping. To
evaluate concentration averaging requires the determination of vertical contaminant
distributions through multi-level sampling within the capture zone of a drinking water
well. We have developed and tested, at sites exhibiting subsurface gasoline contamination, a number of practical approaches for conducting multi-level sampling for use with
hollow stem auger drilling and small bore, direct drive point samples. These approaches
coupled with quantitativefieldanalytical methods (Roe et al., 1989; Stuart etal, 1991;
Lacy el al., 1993) and semi-quantitative field screening methods (Robbins et al, 1989)
provided reliable, cost effective, and real-time means to evaluate vertical contaminant
distributions. Our investigations reveal that groundwater contaminant distributions
associated with gasoline leakage are vertically restricted, having very high gradients of
the order of thousands of ppb m"1. Because of these high gradients, it is necessary to
perform three-dimensional contaminant delineation in order to assess health risks to
drinking water wells and for developing effective remediation schemes.
REFERENCES
Lacy, M. S., Wang, S. & Robbins, G. A. (1993) Circumventingco-elutionin screeninggasolinecontaminatedsoil and water
with portable gas chromatographs. In: Proc. 3rd International Symp. on Field Screening (24-26 February, Las Vegas,
Nevada) 2, 1025-1036.
Martin-Hay den, J. M., Robbins, G. A. & Bristol, R. D. (1991) Mass balance evaluation of monitoring well purging. Part
II. Field testt a gasoline contamination site. J. Contaminant Hydro!. 8, 225-241.
Robbins, G. A. (1989) Influence of using purged and partially penetrating monitoring wells on contaminant detection,
mapping and modeling. Ground Wat. 27, 155-162.
Robbins, G. A. & Martin-Hayden, J. M. (1991) Mass balance evaluation of monitoring well purging. Part I. Theoretical
models and implications for representative sampling. J. Contaminant Hydrol. 8, 203-224.
Robbins, G. A., Bristol, R. D. & Roe, V. D. (1989) A field screening method for gasoline contamination using a
polyethylenebag sampling system. Ground Wat. Monit. Rev. 9, 87-97.
Roe, V. D., Lacy, M. J., Stuart, J. D. & Robbins, G. A. (1989) Manual headspace method to analyze for the volatile
aromatics of gasoline in ground water and soil samples. Anal. Chem. 6 1 , 2584-2585.
Stuart, J. D.,Want, S., Robbins,G. A. &Wood,C. (1991)FieldscreeningofBTEX ingasoline-contaminatedgroundwater
and soil samples by a manual, static headspace GC method. In: Proc. 2nd International Symp. - Field Screening
Methods for Hazardous Wastes and Toxic Chemicals (12-14 February, Las Vegas, Nevada). National Water Well
Assoc.

TMCP and TCEP groundwater pollution linked to the

handling of polyurethane resin components
MAURIZIO AMIGONI
Ussl 3 Varese, Via O. Rossi, I 21100 Varese, Italy

CSVALDO SAPEMI
Ussl 6 Gallarate, Largo Boito 2, 121013, Gallarate, Italy

In 1986, tris-(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP) and tris-(2-chloroisopropyl) phosphate