I'm looking into options for soil testing that are more accessible but also reliable, and am curious about what folks out there have been using to test soils for heavy metals, PAH's, and other oil and gas related contaminants. Have you used colorimeters, spectometers, reagants or something else to characterize these in soils? Do you know of any extension offices, agencies or makers spaces offering cheap soil contaminant testing? Which guidelines do you use to compare your soil test results to in terms of contaminant limits?
I'll be at the Barnraising in Houston and hoping we can get together to explore soil testing options- what can we further develop to be more usable and give us better results? If you have experience with soil testing for contaminants, please be in touch and lets work on this together!