Why did you take that sample?

Over the past decade, substantial federal, state and private sector resources have been expended to address uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. While these efforts are aimed at protecting human health and the environment from uncontrolled releases of toxic chemicals, it is often difficult to ascertain how activities that have occurred at a hazardous waste site have or will achieve the objectives of protecting human health and the environment. Success in achieving these goals of hazardous waste site cleanup argues for focused data collection that yields the appropriate information for toxicological interpretation. This article describes an effort to focus site characterization to yield information that can be employed in a standard toxicological evaluation.