Threat by chemical substances: Legislation, production, use and waste - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 50

substances, e.g., petroleum hydrocarbons, which are mixtures or special groups of
highly different chemicals after separation from volatile hydrocarbons to polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) or tars, which are still multicomponent mixtures such
as kerosene, gasoline, diesel, paraffin waxes. Components originating from petroleum
are handled as any other xenobiotics, e.g., purified aromatic compounds for cosmetics
and food such as linear and cyclic terpenes and aromatic compounds with orange,
lemon, rose, geranium or woody odor. The processing of petroleum hydrocarbons
is a dominant industry with many HPV end products such as detergents, fertilizers,
medicines, paints, plastics, synthetic fibers and synthetic rubber.
In line with the risk-based management of chemicals, some hazards are integrated
when creating groups such as PBT (persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic), CMR (car-
cinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic) or vPvB (very persistent and very bioaccumulative)
by European REACH or other US-wide or world-wide regulations to facilitate han-
dling of the legal obligations and other consequences of classifying a chemical substance
belonging to any of these complex groups.

5.1 Practical grouping of environment-contaminating chemicals
A practical grouping of typical chemical substances polluting the environment is intro-
duced below. These chemical substances are generally handled as a group in the
environmental management of contaminated land, including the engineering practice
of environmental risk assessment and remediation of contaminated sites.
Environmental contaminants grouped according to their physico-chemical proper-
ties influencing their environmental fate and adverse effects are listed below. There are
similarities in the risk management concepts and methodologies of these contaminant
groups, e.g., monitoring methods (detection, chemical analysis), risk assessment and
risk reduction.

- Metals, semimetals and their compounds;

- Inorganic chemicals (others than metals);

- Petroleum hydrocarbons and derivatives;

- Benzene and alkyl benzenes (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes or

BTEX);

- Volatile (non-halogenated) organic compounds;

- Semivolatile (non-halogenated) organics;

- Phenols;

- PAHs;

- Halogenated aliphatic organic compounds;

- Halogenated aromatic organic compounds;

- Chlorophenols;

- PCBs;

- Dioxins [polychlorodibenzo-dioxins (PCDD) and polychlorodibenzo-furans

(PCDF)];

- Solvents;

- Pesticides, biocides.

The last two groups (solvents and pesticides) are mixed groups, containing

chemically very different compounds.