SUMMARY OF THE REMEDIATION TECHNOLOGIES DEVELOPMENT FORUM
IINERT SOIL-METALS ACTION TEAM
CONFERENCE CALL

March 16, 1999
3:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.

On Tuesday, March 16, 1999, the following members of the IINERT Soil-Metals Action Team met in a conference call:

Bill Berti, DuPont Life Sciences (Action Team Co-Chair)
James Ryan, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Action Team Co-Chair)
Sally Brown, University of Washington
Rahul Chawla, DuPont
Harry Compton, EPA
Scott Fredericks, EPA
Dean Hesterberg, North Carolina State University
Steve Hilts, Trail Lead Taskforce
David Mosby, Missouri Department of Natural Resources
Mike Ruby, Exponent Environmental Group

Also present was Christine Hartnett of Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG).

PLANS FOR FUTURE MEETINGS

Human Health Issues Meeting

During a previous meeting, David Mosby agreed to summarize available Joplin data. Mosby said that he plans to release a draft of the summary in May 1999 and would like to meet with Action Team members beforehand. Action Team members agreed to meet in mid- to late April in Kansas City, Missouri, to discuss the data. Mosby agreed to identify potential meeting dates and to contact key investigators (e.g., Stan Casteel, John Yang, Judith Hallfrisch, Rufus Chaney, and Jim Ryan) to ask about their availability. Mosby said that his May 1999 deadline could slip if he does not receive data soon. He is still waiting for (1) Casteel's pig dosing data, (2) Chaney/Hallfrisch's rat dosing data, and (3) Sally Brown's most recent plant data. Brown said that she will remind Chaney to send the rat dosing data to Mosby. As for the plant data, Brown said, samples have been run through the inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometer (ICP), but the data are not yet ready for distribution.

Ecosystem Restoration Meeting

Bill Berti said that the IINERT Action Team will meet in June 1999 to discuss ecological endpoint issues. The meeting will take place in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and field trips are planned in Kellogg, Idaho, and British Columbia, Canada. In addition, a workshop has been attached to the front end of the meeting. Prior to the conference call, Berti sent a preliminary meeting agenda outlining activities for four days:

• Monday, June 21: Compost/Residuals Workshop. Berti said that Brown and Chuck Henry will be leading a discussion on compost and residuals. Berti said that Action Team members who attend the workshop may need to travel over the weekend, but Brown said that she may start the workshop late in the day so that participants can travel on Monday morning instead. Brown agreed to send Berti additional details soon.

• Tuesday, June 22: Bunker Hill Orientation and Tour. Berti said that field demonstrations have been established at the Bunker Hill site in Kellogg, Idaho. Site representatives have agreed to take IINERT Action Team members on a tour. Brown said that she will be prepared to discuss the data that have been collected to date at this site. (Brown also said that she will try to give a presentation on data collected at the Leadville site.)

• Wednesday, June 23: Ecosystem Restoration Meeting and Discussion. Berti said that Action Team members will have a meeting on June 23rd. Brown recommended holding the meeting at the Coeur d'Alene Inn and Conference Center. She said that this hotel is located about 45 minutes from the Spokane, Washington, airport and that a shuttle service escorts people from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to downtown Coeur d'Alene.

• Thursday, June 24: Trail, British Columbia Site Orientation and Tour. Steve Hilts noted that a demonstration project is underway at the Trail site and that samples will be collected at the 6-month mark. He said these data will be analyzed and presented at the June 1999 meeting. Mike Ruby agreed to work with Hilts to prepare presentation materials for the Trail tour. Brown said that the Trail site is located about 3 hours from Coeur d'Alene and that University vehicles might be available to shuttle Action Team members from Idaho to Canada. One conference call participant recommended driving to Trail on the night of the 23rd and staying overnight. Mosby noted that some state employees might have difficulty getting permission to stay overnight in Canada. To avoid this situation, Hilts recommended traveling to Colville, Washington, on the night of the 23rd and then driving to Trail on the morning of the 24th. (Colville is located about 1 hour south of Trail.)

In addition to those sessions currently listed on the preliminary agenda, Brown recommended holding a wrap-up session to discuss what was learned during the field trips and to identify some appropriate indices and measurement variables. Conference call participants agreed that this would be a valuable discussion and tried to identify a time slot. Berti recommended Friday morning, but noted that attendance might be poor toward the end of the week. (Mosby said that he and Mark Doolan may have to leave before Friday.) Other conference call participants recommended Thursday night over dinner..

Berti stressed that Action Team members should not feel obligated to attend all of the activities listed in the preliminary agenda. He said he would like to have a large group for the June 23 Ecosystem Restoration meeting, but that he knows some people will not have enough time to attend the field trips. Likewise, Brown stressed that the June 21 workshop is not a central portion of the RTDF meeting and that Action Team members should only attend if they have a specific interest in using compost and residuals.

Conference call participants discussed who should be invited to the meeting. So far, Berti said, members of the IINERT Steering Committee are the only people who have received the preliminary agenda. He said that ERG will send information to a larger group once the meeting details and logistics are more concrete. (Berti hopes information will be sent out by the end of March 1999.) Berti asked whether invitations should be sent to anyone who is not on the IINERT mailing list; Ruby recommended sending invitations to members of the National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI) Metal Bioavailability Workgroup. Berti asked conference call participants to send him names of people who should be invited. Brown and Berti acknowledged that the tours might be ineffective if more than 25 people attend. Berti asked whether the Trail representatives plan to visit the Bunker Hill site. Hilts said that he and Bill Duncan will attend and that Al Mattes might as well. Ruby said that he and Todd Martin (an engineer affiliated with the Trail site) will also attend. One participant recommended inviting a large group to the June 23 Ecosystem Restoration meeting and then establishing smaller groups for the field trips.

Berti agreed to continue working on the agenda and the invitation mailing list. He asked conference call participants to forward additional comments on the agenda to him, Brown, or Duncan. ERG agreed to start planning the meeting once it receives additional logistical information from Brown. (Brown agreed to send this information by March 19, 1999.)

ACTIVITIES AT THE JOPLIN, MISSOURI, SITE

Conference call participants discussed the following issues related to the Joplin site:

• Mosby agreed to send Ruby some draft reports on pig dosing studies. In exchange, Ruby agreed to send Mosby some information on an in vitro methodology.

• Brown told Berti that she received the bucketful of soil that he sent.

• Berti said that he sent John Drexler and Ryan sieved soil samples from the September 1997 sampling event. Both investigators, Berti explained, will perform a physiologically based extraction test.

• Mosby said that Yang recently finished performing WPS and XRD on the iron plus phosphate soil treatments. Mosby said that Yang looked at about 10 particles and none of them had phosphorus with the lead. Brown said that she talked to Ryan about the poor results that were generated with the 1%P triple super phosphate treatment. She said that the pH may have been the cause of the poor outcome, noting that solubilization occurred but sufficient reprecipitation may not have. She said that she plans to experiment with some samples in the laboratory to see if she can confirm whether this explanation is reasonable. Mosby noted that the 0.5% phosphoric acid treatment, which was used in a pig dosing study, also yielded disappointing results. These soils were incubated, Mosby noted, and Yang suspects that some organic matter degraded. (Yang found sulfur associated with the lead particles from the incubated soils. The speculation is that the sulfur was liberated from organic matter that decomposed due to elevated temperatures of incubation. Brown and Mosby agreed that the sulfur was probably in the form of sulfate as opposed to sulfide due to the oxidation state [and elevated bioavailability] of the soils.) Brown encouraged Mosby to continue to look for explanations of unexpected results. She said it is important for the Action Team to explain what caused them and how to learn from them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berti said that a bibliography has been added to the RTDF Web site (http://www.rtdf.org). He said that Chaney provided this bibliography and that it includes about three databases. Brown asked whether Chaney included his bibliography on reclamation remediation. Berti was not sure and encouraged Brown to peruse the Web site by clicking on IINERT, Administration Area, and Technical Documents. Berti said that the bibliography is currently downloadable, but that EMS is modifying it so that it will be a searchable database. Berti plans to add some articles to the bibliography and he encouraged other conference call participants to do so as well. Those who are interested in doing so, should contact Berti (William.R.Berti@USA.dupont.com) or Carolyn Perroni (cperroni@emsus.com).

SULFIDE TREATMENTS

Dean Hesterberg said that he is trying to determine whether metal sulfides can be used to reduce solubility and bioavailability. He said that he is writing a proposal for the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), asking for funding for this project. Hesterberg noted that his laboratory focuses mostly on chemistry, specifically, looking at chemical transformations and changes in local molecular bonds. Since conference call participants agreed that the Action Team is interested in this area of research, Hesterberg plans to keep the team abreast of his findings and to solicit input on bioavailability experiments. In the SERDP proposal, Hesterberg said, he would like to state that he is a member of the IINERT Action Team and that the results from his study may be of interest to this group. He asked if this would be acceptable, and stressed that he is not seeking an endorsement. Berti and Ryan had no objections.

Hesterberg asked whether many Action Team members are working with sulfides. Mosby said that much discussion has revolved around this topic, but that he is not sure how much work has been performed, because sulfide treatments are only successful in anoxic environments. Hesterberg said that a group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory was doing research to determine whether injecting hydrogen sulfide gas into contaminated soils at the Chemical Waste Landfill at Sandia National Laboratory would reduce chromium (VI). (Hesterberg and Dale Sayers' group did some EXAFS analysis on one of their laboratory test samples and found that copper sulfide formed during this treatment.) Berti said that some work has been done to see how Acid Volatile Sulfides/Simultaneously Extracted Metals (AVS/SEM) and sediment toxicity change when sulfides are added to sediments. These results, Berti said, should be summarized in the literature in the near future.

NEXT CONFERENCE CALL

The next conference call is scheduled for April 20, 1999, between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. EST.

MISCELLANEOUS

During a previous conference call, Ryan asked Brown to send him a soil sample from the Bunker Hill site. Berti asked Brown whether this action item has been completed. Brown said that it may be a couple of months before she can send Ryan an appropriate sample: she has a wetland sample in the laboratory, but Ryan is not very interested in it. Brown noted, however, that Ryan has probably already received a soil sample from the Leadville site.

ACTION ITEMS

• Action Team members agreed to meet in mid- to late April in Kansas City, Missouri, to discuss the Joplin data. Mosby agreed to identify potential meeting dates and to contact key investigators to ask about their availability.

• Brown said that she will remind Chaney to send rat dosing data to Mosby.

• Brown agreed to send Berti additional details about the June 21 Composts/Residuals Workshop agenda by March 19, 1999.

• Brown said that she will be prepared to discuss the Bunker Hill data at the June 22 site visit. In addition, she said, she will try to give a presentation on data collected at the Leadville site.

• Hilts agreed to analyze and summarize Trail site data before the June 24 site visit. Ruby agreed to work with Hilts to prepare presentation materials.

• ERG will distribute invitations for the June 1999 meeting once the meeting details and logistics are more concrete. (Berti hoped information would be sent out by the end of March 1999.)

• Berti agreed to continue working on the agenda and the invitation mailing list for the June 1999 meeting. He asked conference call participants to forward additional comments on the agenda to him, Brown, or Duncan. Also, he asked conference call participants to send him names of people who should be invited to the meeting.

• ERG agreed to start planning the June 1999 meeting once it receives additional logistical information from Brown. (Brown agreed to send this information by March 19, 1999.)

• Mosby agreed to send Ruby some draft reports on pig dosing studies. In exchange, Ruby agreed to send Mosby some information on an in vitro methodology.