Microbiology/Environmental HW help!

[Armueller2001]

We just started our Environmental Remediation class and our teacher assigned a homework that I'm not sure what the answer is. Here's the assignment

"You are an employee at a big Environmental consulting firm. Your firm is dealing with a Superfund site where subsurface and aquifer are contaminated by TCE. At one weekly meeting, your supervisor asked your input to the reasons for TCE concentration decrease at one bore hole.
Please provide your justification based on your training, expertise, and background."

I'm thinking maybe presence of a bacteria that degrades TCE may be causing the anomaly but I thought they had to be genetically modified to do this, not naturally occuring..

[ProgRapture]

Now THAT'S jibberish!
I'd help if I could, but that made no sense to me...

[HollowBassman]

Obviously someone is reaching into the bore hole and stealing the TCE when no ones looking. Probably some kid trying to get high off of it.

[Jared Lash]

Originally Posted by Armueller2001

We just started our Environmental Remediation class and our teacher assigned a homework that I'm not sure what the answer is. Here's the assignment

"You are an employee at a big Environmental consulting firm. Your firm is dealing with a Superfund site where subsurface and aquifer are contaminated by TCE. At one weekly meeting, your supervisor asked your input to the reasons for TCE concentration decrease at one bore hole.
Please provide your justification based on your training, expertise, and background."

I'm thinking maybe presence of a bacteria that degrades TCE may be causing the anomaly but I thought they had to be genetically modified to do this, not naturally occuring..

TCE can become unstable when exposed to metals. I'm not sure how the bore hole would have introduced them, but it's a thought.

[Fontaine]

theres a remainder of 4

[Armueller2001]

Originally Posted by TheBigO

TCE can become unstable when exposed to metals. I'm not sure how the bore hole would have introduced them, but it's a thought.

I was thinking maybe a metal or other chemical may have caused it to degrade to some other hydrocarbon or something.. I'll have to check it out, thanks

[Hawaii Islander]

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts19.pdf

TCE evaporates, both from water and soil, when exposed to air. If water from the aquifer was in the bore site, it would be exposed to the atmosphere facilitating evaporation of the TCE, which may lower the TCE concentration at the bore site.

Also, its possible that the TCE was more readily leached through the soil to the aquifer due to differences in soil composition between bore sites.