ABSTRACT
Interest in the presence of volatile halogenated compounds in water has been high for several years because of the discovery of the ubiquitous presence of trihalomethanes, THMs, in chlorinated drinking water in several countries. The purgeable halogenated compounds on the US Environmental Protection Agency's priority pollutant list are tabulated together with some of their physical properties. The concentrations of purgeable halocarbons in ambient lake and river sediments should be low because partitioning onto solids is not a favored process for these chemicals. The contamination of drinking water with purgeable organics is a problem in many countries. High concentrations of purgeable organics, which are not chlorination byproducts, have been found in some drinking waters which use groundwater as the source. Extraction of volatile organics into a water immiscible organic solvent is one of the simplest procedures for sample concentration. The organic contaminants tend to partition preferentially into the organic solvent from the water.
