Use of direct-push sampling tools for rapid investigations of contaminated sites has proliferated in the past several years. A direct-push device, referred to as a ground water sampling profiler, was recently developed at the University of Waterloo. This tool differs from other direct-push tools in that point samples are collected at multiple depths in the same hole without retrieving, decontaminating, and re-driving the tool after each sampling event. The collection of point samples, rather than samples from a longer screened interval, allows an exceptional level of detail to be generated about the vertical distribution of contamination from each hole. The benefits of acquiring this level of detail are contingent on minimization of vertical cross contamination of samples caused by drag down from high concentration zones into underlying low concentration zones. In a detailed study of chlorinated solvent plumes in sandy aquifers, we found that drag down using the profiler is minimal or non-detectable even when the tool is driven through high concentration zones of dissolved chlorinated solvent contamination. Chlorinated solvent concentrations, primarily PCE and TCE at or below a detection limit of 1 mu g/L, were obtained directly beneath plumes with maximum concentrations up to thousands of mu g/L. Minimal drag down, on the order of a few mu g/L to 20 mu g/L, may have been observed below chlorinated solvent concentrations of several tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of mu g/L. Drag down through DNAPL zones was not evaluated.
