Presence of Epsilon HCH Together with Four Other HCH Isomers in Drinking Water, Groundwater and Soil in a Former Lindane Production Site Valentina Fuscoletti 1 • Laura Achene 1 • Fabrizio Gismondi 2 • Daniela Lamarra 2 • Luca Lucentini 1 • Salvatore Spina 2 • Enrico Veschetti 1 • Luigi Turrio-Baldassarri 1 Received: 19 September 2014 / Accepted: 4 March 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract In the frame of a long-standing action of re- mediation of industrial soil and prevention of water pol- lution, a monitoring of the drinking water of the Italian town of Colleferro was performed by the ISS. The town has 22,000 inhabitants and is adjacent to a big industrial site where HCH was produced. Industrial wastes were buried in the site, eventually contaminating superficial aquifers, while a canal serving the industrial plant spread the con- tamination into the Sacco river and thence to the agricul- tural soil and to cow milk. The contamination of superficial aquifers engendered fears of pollution of the deep aquifers whence the town draws its drinking water. The results of the monitoring indicate that there is no risk for the population from consumption of the water. In one of the wells the e-HCH was the main isomer reaching a concen- tration of 66 ng/L: so far the presence of this isomer in water was never reported. The paper also summarily re- ports the main features of soil and superficial groundwater pollution in the area and briefly describes the main actions taken by the authorities. Keywords HCH isomers Á Drinking water Á Groundwater Á Soil remediation Á Industrial contamination Á Epsilon HCH Production of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) began in Germany in 1947 (Vijgen 2006; Willett et al. 1998). It was based on free radical chlorination of benzene and yielded a mixture of various isomers (alpha 60 %–70 %, beta 5 %– 12 %, gamma 10 %–15 %, delta 6 %–10 %, epsilon 3 %– 4 % – Waliszewski 1993) known as technical HCH. The use of technical HCH as a pesticide was rapidly replaced, since the 50 0 s, by the purified gamma isomer, the real pesticide, named lindane if 99 % pure. The use of technical HCH in agriculture was progressively banned (Canada 1971; USA 1978, China 1983 – Willett et al. 1998), while lindane remained legal. Gamma HCH never exceeded 15 % of the product of the synthesis, implying that roughly 85 % of the product, mainly alpha isomer, was left in the plant as a solid waste, together with batches of faulty product. In this way it was estimated that, for each ton of lindane, 8–12 tons (Vijgen 2006) of organochlorine waste material were produced. This material is chemically very stable and very difficult either to reuse or to dispose of. In a period of loose attention to the environment, the solid waste was frequently considered as an inert material almost insoluble in water and was piled up in huge open air heaps in the plant site; sometimes it was disposed of simply by burying it, as documented in two reports by Vijgen (2006; Vijgen and Egenhofer 2009). These kinds of improper disposal of HCH wastes took place in many different countries, often causing pollution of both groundwater and surface water (Ferna ´ndez et al. 2013; Torres et al. 2013; Ricking and Schwarzbauer 2008; Wycisk 2003; Wycisk et al. 2013). In some cases the buried materials included or gave origin to a dense non aqueous phase liquid (Ferna ´ndez et al. 2013; Wycisk 2003), more mobile in the soil. Beside the illegal dumping, any chemical plant caused invariably dispersion of contaminants due to accidents, leaks, spills during production, storage or shipping. This kind of Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00128-015-1516-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Luigi Turrio-Baldassarri Luigi.Turrio@iss.it 1 Istituto superiore di Sanita ` (ISS), Rome, Italy 2 Ufficio Commissariale per la valle del Sacco, Rome, Italy 123 Bull Environ Contam Toxicol DOI 10.1007/s00128-015-1516-6