Testing Methods and the Meaning of the Results in Chemical Characterization of Wastes

Abstract
Waste management is substantially on the basis of scientific data concerning physical and chemical characterization. One of the objects of chemical characterization of wastes is that "how much substances (elemental, inorganic or organic) are contained in a waste" and "how much they might be released into the environment" . In the process to obtain chemical characteristics, it is important to realize that different testing methods give different data. In this report, various testing methods of heavy metals were summarized. As the results vary from different sampling points or different testing methods, the variability of data in national survey of Japanese Leaching Test No.13 (JLT13), and our group survey on several testing methods including total content tests and the JLT13 leaching test were used as the examples.

Key words: waste, chemical testing method, leaching test, content test, heavy metals