I'm looking for bad things

Concurrent to the senior synthesis project, the senior analytical project I am involved in is pretty interesting. My group are looking for PAHs and heavy metals in local soil samples. Unfortunately, there isn't enough time available to do a significantly large statistical sampling of different location-types as found in most of the environmental literature, such as comparison between residential and urban areas or high-traffic versus low-traffic locales. But there is enough to compare soil from LSU with soil from two spots on the Mississippi River: one near ExxonMobil and the other near the bridge. For each location we gathered three representative samples.

The bulk of the project is sample preparation (as always is in analytical settings). The PAHs are being extracted from our soil samples using dichloromethane as the solvent. The extraction is being expediated (and made safer) by using a microwave oven instead of other traditional methods. Heavy metal extraction is a simple acid digestion in concentrated nitric acid. Instead of using the "old school" hot plate method of acid digestion, again we're using a microwave oven to expediate extraction (and it simultaneously makes the procedure safer). [1]

We're using GC-MS to quantitate the PAHs, and we're using flame-AAS or flame-AES to quantitate the heavy metals. [2]

Let's see how "clean" these soil samples are? I'll post results in ~two weeks (because that's when it's due).

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[1] An interesting note, we want to study lead and copper particularly. However, our group got into a bit of an argument over whether we would have extracted enough of either within our detection limits. I argued we wouldn't based on a few articles I read from the literature which used hydrofluoric acid to extract lead and copper. We'll see, though.[a]

[a] Funny story, a labmate argued that HF wasn't a dangerous acid because it wasn't a "strong" acid. I think the only thing saving him from serious scorn from me would be the fact that he's a pre-med >.<

[2] I'm arguing we run both the absorption and emission experiments. It's not hard to change experiments on the user interface, and I haven't had the time to peruse the literature or any standard procedures to see which would be better for which metal. It's easier to throw away useless data than realizing you're missing useful data.