Effects of particulate explosives on estimating contamination at a historical explosives testing area.

A historical explosives testing area harbored contamination as unevenly distributed solid particles within a contaminant-stained soil matrix. Particles larger than 3 mm diameter accounted for 96.4% of the explosives contamination. Independent sampling and analysis methods showed significant differences in contaminant estimations due to particulate explosives. We present a solvent-based sample averaging method designed to solve spatial heterogeneity problems resulting from the presence of contaminant particles.