Identification of sources of oil spills in soils and sediments by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry has been applied to the study of the residual oil contamination of the sediments in the area of an emergency mazut spill in an industrial enterprise. The contamination level appeared to be very high in nearly all samples collected within a rather wide area; however, the oil in the studied samples have undergone significant weathering; therefore, we have concluded that they had got into the sediments long before the spill under consideration or had been accumulating in them systematically for many years. The methodology of the identification of oil in soils taking into account their transfer and weathering is considered; it employs characteristics of the hydrocarbon type composition along with the individual marker compounds.