Distribution and health risk assessment of total petroleum hydrocarbon in a gas station contaminated site in Chongqing, China

Abstract

The total petroleum hydrocarbon contamination of gas stations has now become a serious environmental issue on the global scale. In this paper, investigation and human risk assessment of soil contamination was undertaken in a typical gas station in Chongqing. The results indicated that the site soil was polluted by total petroleum hydrocarbon to various extents and concentrations of some points were far beyond the critical value of intervention basing on Dutch standard, oil spilled from tank or oil leaked from underground oil storage are supposed to must be the main contributing source. Unfortunately, this site would be planed to utilize for residential land use. The residents would have great health risk on account of the long-term exposure to total petroleum hydrocarbons. Therefore, contaminate site should be remediated before construction as the residential area.