The Source of U.S. EPA's Sixteen PAH Priority Pollutants

Little is written or published about where EPA's 16 PAH Priority Pollutants came from or how and why these particular compounds were selected as representatives of PAHs to regulate. Now, over thirty years later questions are being asked whether some of these compounds are still useful or whether others might be better. Environmental analysis today is very different from the way it was at the time of this list’s selection. The present is often linked to the past; thus, in order to evaluate the current list of regulated PAHs, the context and the epochal times during which the list was developed is important to understand. This paper presents a personal history of analytical chemistry in the late 1960s and early 1970s leading to the 1976 legal settlement known as the EPA Consent Decree. It also details where, when, how, and (very importantly) why each of the 16 PAHs were selected as representative compounds used for environmental analyses as part of the Consent Decree.