Measurement of bioaccessibility of organic pollutants in soil

The quantification of organic contaminant bioaccessibility in soils and sediments is essential for the risk assessment and remediation of contaminated land. Within this framework, practitioners require standardised protocols. Cyclodextrins are a group of macrocyclic compounds that can form inclusion complexes with organic xenobiotics. This occurrence can be exploited to measure the labile/rapidly desorbable compound fraction, which correlates with microbial degradation. We present a rapid and easily reproducible HPCD shake extraction technique that has been experimentally demonstrated to directly predict microbial availability and degradation in soil. This method can provide practitioners with both an indication of bioremediation end-points and may be valuable in the risk assessment of contaminated land.