Comparison of Fiberglass and Other Polymeric Well Casings, Part III. Sorption and Leaching of Trace‐Level Metals

This paper contains the results of a laboratory study that was designed to compare sorption of low (mg/L) concentrations of 11 organic solutes by six polymeric materials (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene [ABS], fluorinated ethylene propylene [FEP], fiberglass-reinforced epoxy [FRE] and fiberglass-reinforced plastic [FRP], polyvinyl chloride [PVC], and poly-tetrafluoroethylene [PTFE]). During this six-week study, ABS sorbed analytes much more rapidly and to a greater extent than did the other materials, and PVC and FRE sorbed analytes more slowly and to a lesser extent than the other materials tested. As the study progressed, an increasing number of spurious peaks were found in the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) chromatograms of some of our samples, indicating that leaching of some consituents had occurred. By the end of the study, there were 11 additional peaks in the ABS samples, five in the FRP samples, and one in the FRE samples. Analysis by purge and trap gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) of those samples and of well water samples that were exposed to the casings for 500 hours revealed the identity of some of the leached constituents; acrylonitrile and styrene (components of ABS), chloroform and ethylbenzene (an intermediate in the production of styrene) from the ABS pipe, and toluene, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, and ethylbenzene from the FRP casing.