ABSTRACT
Wastewater consists of not only everything flushed down the toilets but also everything washed down the drains, particularly in the kitchen. Residential waste typically contains everything from human excrement to a medley of detergents, cleaning chemicals, grease, garbage, and any of a number of unknowns. Industrial and commercial waste includes all that which is encountered in residential waste system and much more depending on the type of industry and chemicals used in the building. Although waste can be a concoction of different chemicals, the more commonly encountered hazardous gases generated in a waste stream are known to be associated with raw sewage in a septic system or community sewage line. A clogged or broken sewer line may result in a backup of sewer gases into a structure and noxious/toxic gases returning to the air space(s) within an occupied building.
The components most frequently encountered in sewer gases are hydrogen sulfide and methane. With the exception of methane, sewage gas sampling can best be accomplished by collecting air by siliconized evacuated canisters, which do not react with sulfur compounds as do the typical SUMMA-like canisters. Methane and VOC samples require different sampling and/or analytical methods than those required for sulfur-containing compounds.
