Effectiveness of Microbe Application to Petroleum Spills at Crash Sites

Each year vehicular accidents cause gasoline and diesel spills on Arizona roadways. ADOT currently uses Micro-Blaze®, a commercially available microbial solution, as a supplement to natural degradation of vehicular petroleum spills in soils. With an emphasis on minimizing or eliminating environmental and public health hazard, ADOT is interested in determining cost-effective methods to address spills involving petroleum products from roadway vehicular accidents. This study investigated whether Micro-Blaze, Hydro Clean®, Miracle-Gro®, or water accelerated the degradation process significantly over natural processes and that it will help to determine their effectiveness in accelerating the remediation of petroleum products (diesel No. 2 and unleaded gasoline) on predominant Arizona soil types from roadway vehicular accidents.