Search

Industrialized countries are faced with developing programs to deal with closed or abandoned waste sites that contain a wide variety of hazardous wastes either polluting ground and surface waters or posing other unacceptable threats to human health and the environment. These programs will typically involve identification of the substances at such sites and attempt to assess their health and environmental hazard. Subsequently, there may be an emergency response, or a long-term remedial action to neutralize, contain, or remove the hazards. Methods to perform these tasks are generally crude, very expensive, or ineffective. Efforts are needed to identify or develop the most economical methods for solving these problems.

Hazardous waste landfills pose uniquely challenging environmental problems which arise as a result of the chemical complexity of waste sites, their involvement of many environmental media, and their very size and volume. Chemical substances of every description have or could be found at a typical hazardous waste landfill. These substances would represent the full range of physical and chemical properties, from inert to reactive, from nonvolatile to highly volatile, and from ionic, water miscible to nonpolar, hydrophobic compounds. Given this range of physico-chemical properties, and that landfills are earth containment facilities, there is the probability that all environmental compartments, air, water (surface and ground), soil, and biota will be involved. The additional factor which complicates the understanding of landfills is their size and volume. Although for certain purposes landfills can be considered quasi-point sources, in reality they are generally large and often situated in several different geological and hydrogeological regimes. The actual volume or mass of material existing at a landfill makes clear definition of its chemistry impractical.