Providing CLAM Water Monitoring During Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico

Continuous Extractive sampling at the C.I.Agent Command Center at 3000 Beinville Blvd., Dauphin Island was started May 20, 2010, and is ongoing. The extracted disks are sent to Anatek Labs in Idaho on a daily basis for elution, silica-gel clean-up, and analysis. The SPE disks are immediately analyzed for Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons and PAH’s, if the TPH is found to be present at appreciable levels. The (ACF) disks for the dispersants are kept stored and refrigerated, pending on back ordered reference standards. These disks will be eluted and analyzed for Propylene glycol and 2- Butoxyethanol upon receipt of the standards The monitoring was established early to develop a water column baseline, and to observe the levels as the spill encroaches into the area.

The water column was sampled at depths between 2-4 feet dependent on the tides, and excluded any surface inclusion. Each disk is pre-spiked with 10 ug of Terphenly d-14 as a recovery field surrogate. The start and finish pumping volumes were recorded along with the time deployed. The total volume in liters extracted was calculated from this information, and was recorded on the chain of custody for the analytical quantitation. All results were reported in ug/l rather than mg/l due to the large volume of water that was extracted, compared to the standard 1 liter grab sample.