ABSTRACT
Environmental forensics may sound like a glamorous, exciting discipline; it certainly can be, but it can have a lot of routine analyses and report writing as well. The subject must be approached in a scientific manner where hypotheses are rigorously tested. One’s duty (in the United Kingdom) is to the court, to help resolve the truth of the situation, rather than to any one party, even if that party might be paying for the work to be done (Civil Procedure Rules, Part 35). The definition of truth may also be open to question; as scientists, we generally accept hypotheses to be true until such time as we find either a
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 Preparation .............................................................................................................. 2
Sites ................................................................................................................. 3 Events and Spills ........................................................................................... 3
Legal Framework .................................................................................................... 4 Background versus Baseline ................................................................................. 4 Know the Contaminant ........................................................................................ 6 Sampling .................................................................................................................. 6
Media .............................................................................................................. 7 Bias .................................................................................................................. 7 Number of Samples ...................................................................................... 7 Sample Quantity ........................................................................................... 7 Security .......................................................................................................... 8 Cost ................................................................................................................. 8
Analysis ................................................................................................................... 8 Developing the Case .............................................................................................. 9
Statistics ......................................................................................................... 9 Data Presentation ....................................................................................... 10
Source, Pathway, Sink .......................................................................................... 10 Proving the Case ...................................................................................................11 The Expert Witness Report ..................................................................................11 References .............................................................................................................. 12
better hypothesis to describe the observations or we find an exception that disproves it. These truths may be real or just our ‘best guess’ at the present time. This definition of truth may also be different from what a court defines as true since the former may be based on belief.
